We can all stop pretending that Bannon and Milo aren't Nazis. https://t.co/vQ5rd718I7
— Zedward Tweeterhands (@ZeddRebel) October 5, 2017
Per Mic, the blowback has begun:
Vice has cut ties with a senior writer from its feminist vertical Broadly after a BuzzFeed report revealed that the writer pitched story ideas to then-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, and once requested that Yiannopoulos mock a “fat feminist” writer.
Mitchell Sunderland, who at the time he sent emails to Yiannopoulos was managing editor of Broadly, was spotted departing Vice’s offices with a box of his belongings. (Mic saw a photo of Sunderland departing.)
A Vice spokesperson confirmed to Mic that Sunderland was let go Friday, and that Vice is continuing to look into the matter…
I’m sure that Mr. Sunderland would never encourage genocide, euthanasia of the disabled, or the invasion of Poland. But, c’mon — doesn’t “everybody” hate those “fat feminist” SJWs?
If you didn’t have a chance to read that Buzzfeed report when Cole posted about it earlier today, it’s well worth your time this weekend:
… During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”…
It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.
These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website — and, in particular, Yiannopoulos — links the Mercer family, the billionaires who fund Breitbart, to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content, and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate.
They capture what Bannon calls his “killing machine” in action, as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world, sifts through these grievances for ideas and content, and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld, collecting advertisers’ checks all along the way…
Milo is definitely not a Nazi. https://t.co/YWtZ9etXfL pic.twitter.com/FIEpJ5RDFM
— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) October 5, 2017
For the record, Yiannopoulos claims he didn’t see those Nazi salutes, because of his “severe myopia.” (Murphy the Trickster God remains an unsubtle scripter.)
… A year and a half ago, Milo Yiannopoulos set himself a difficult task: to define the alt-right. It was five months before Hillary Clinton named the alt-right in a campaign speech, 10 months before the alt-right’s great hope became president, and 17 months before Charlottesville clinched the alt-right as a stalking horse for violent white nationalism. The movement had just begun its explosive emergence into the country’s politics and culture.
At the time, Yiannopoulos, who would later describe himself as a “fellow traveler” of the alt-right, was the tech editor of Breitbart. In summer 2015, after spending a year gathering momentum through GamerGate — the opening salvo of the new culture wars — he convinced Breitbart upper management to give him his own section. And for four months, he helped Bannon wage what the Breitbart boss called in emails to staff “#war.” It was a war, fought story by story, against the perceived forces of liberal activism on every conceivable battleground in American life…
“Finally doing my big feature on the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a March 9, 2016, email to Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, a hacker who is the system administrator of the neo-Nazi hub the Daily Stormer, and who would later ask his followers to disrupt the funeral of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer. “Fancy braindumping some thoughts for me.”
“It’s time for me to do my big definitive guide to the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote four hours later to Curtis Yarvin, a software engineer who under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug helped create the “neoreactionary” movement, which holds that Enlightenment democracy has failed and that a return to feudalism and authoritarian rule is in order. “Which is my whorish way of asking if you have anything you’d like to make sure I include.”“Alt r feature, figured you’d have some thoughts,” Yiannopoulos wrote the same day to Devin Saucier, who helps edit the online white nationalist magazine American Renaissance under the pseudonym Henry Wolff, and who wrote a story in June 2017 called “Why I Am (Among Other Things) a White Nationalist.”…
…Breitbart published “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” It quickly became a touchstone, cited in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, CNN, and New York Magazine, among others. And its influence is still being felt. This past July, in a speech in Warsaw that was celebrated by the alt-right, President Trump echoed a line from the story — a story written by a “brown-sounding” amanuensis, all but line-edited by a white nationalist, laundered for racism by Breitbart’s editors, and supervised by the man who would in short order become the president’s chief strategist…
As you read (again) about hate at Breitbart here's me talking about Politico/NY Times writers backing them https://t.co/2ACm9JrrmP pic.twitter.com/HX56pxplqs
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) October 6, 2017
Given what we now know, everyone involved in the publication of this NYT magazine piece should resign. Also, what a bunch of rubes. pic.twitter.com/esuBm6TVgp
— sean. ?? (@SeanMcElwee) October 5, 2017
On July 22, 2016, Rebekah Mercer — Robert’s powerful daughter — emailed Steve Bannon from her Stanford alumni account. She wanted the Breitbart executive chairman, whom she introduced as “one of the greatest living defenders of Liberty,” to meet an app developer she knew. Apple had rejected the man’s game (Capitol HillAwry, in which players delete emails à la Hillary Clinton) from the App Store, and the younger Mercer wondered “if we could put an article up detailing his 1st amendment political persecution.”…
Bannon, Milo, and Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson met the Mercers aboard their yacht Sea Owl in Cannes in May 2016. https://t.co/IIFn9Jfdxe pic.twitter.com/oscKAlSruK
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) October 5, 2017
Proof that the Mercers bankrolled Milo’s “Dangerous” tour and provided him with their personal security team because he was “scared”. 12/ pic.twitter.com/scbndzqaRA
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) October 5, 2017
…Bannon wrote. “We want you to stir up more. Milo: for your eyes only we r going to use the mercers private security company.”
Copied on the email was Dan Fleuette, Bannon’s coproducer at Glittering Steel and the man who acted for months as the go-between for Yiannopoulos and the Mercers. As Yiannopoulos made the transition in summer 2016 from being a writer to becoming largely the star of a traveling stage show, Fleuette was enlisted to process and wrangle the legion of young assistants, managers, trainers, and other talent the Breitbart tech editor demanded be brought along for the ride.
First came Tim Gionet, the former BuzzFeed social media strategist who goes by “Baked Alaska” on Twitter, whom Yiannopoulos pitched to Fleuette as a tour manager in late May. Gionet accompanied Yiannopoulos to Florida after the June 2016 Pulse nightclub killings in Orlando. The two planned a press conference outside a mosque attended by the shooter, Omar Mateen. (“Brilliant,” Bannon emailed. “Btw they are ALL ‘factories of hate.’”)…
[Yiannopoulos] also heard, with frequency, from accomplished people in predominantly liberal industries — entertainment, tech, academia, fashion, and media — who resented what they felt was a censorious coastal cultural orthodoxy. Taken together, they represent something like a network of sleeper James Damores, vexed but silent for fear of losing their jobs or friends, kvetching to Yiannopoulos as a pressure valve. For Yiannopoulos, these emails weren’t just validation, though they were obviously that. They sometimes became more ammunition for the culture war…Indeed, a major part of Yiannopoulos’s role within Breitbart was aggressively testing limits around racial and anti-Semitic discourse. As far as this went, his opaque organization-with-an-organization structure and crowdsourced ideation and writing processes served Breitbart’s purposes perfectly: They offered upper management a veil of plausible deniability — as long as no one saw the emails BuzzFeed News obtained. In August 2016, a Yiannopoulos staffer sent a “Milo” story by Bokhari directly to Bannon and Marlow for approval.
“Please don’t forward chains like that showing the sausage being made,” Yiannopoulos wrote back. “Everyone knows; but they don’t have to be reminded every time.”…
alt-right (n.): old bigots pay young idiots millions to write jibberish and dress like Legos https://t.co/zvjIJCDPkb
— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) October 6, 2017
Jeffro
Whenever you’re ready, Republicans…whenever you’re ready, Villagers…we can just put this baby to bed in a night or two, amirite? No shame in disavowing Nazis or the leaders who were elected with their support or the crazy-ass billionaires who bankrolled the whole thing. Stand on principles (GOOD ones!) for once.
Mnemosyne
Vice was smart to shitcan this asshole immediately and not try to close ranks. How did they manage to hire this guy to run a feminist website?
Mike J
Speaking of nazis, check out twitter for reaction to the newest Castle Wolfenstein. They’re upset about the SJW game that calls for killing nazis.
Bruuuuce
If it looks like a Nazi, speaks like a Nazi, goose steps like a Nazi, we’re supposed to believe it’s a cute widdle duckling? I don’t think so.
NotMax
Nazis wouldn’t let him into their club.
“Vott a dumkopf!”
NotMax
Trying to digest the jargon “feminist vertical.”
Boggles, the mind does.
Major Major Major Major
It’s a very important piece, everybody should read it.
I’m still fixated on his fucking passwords.
mike in dc
@Mike J:
…huh..I thought that was the whole point of every single CW game ever.
Mnemosyne
Also, just so we’re prepared for the next influx of trolls, I will predict that the same ones who claim that the DNC emails “prove” that Sanders was cheated out of the nomination will claim that these emails don’t actually show anything, let’s move along, who pays attention to emails anyway, amirite?
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Let it go.
Arclite
@Mike J:
I think the slogan in Wolfenstein 2 is “Make America Nazi-free again!”
Who says video games can’t be platforms for political commentary?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
“Yes, Breitbart is a Nazi site, but it should be given White House accreditation because liberals are big fat meanies.”
I hope Jack Shafer wakes up one morning in a pool of his rhabdomyolized muscle tissue and pissed-out kidneys.
Major Major Major Major
@Mike J: you could have stopped at “Speaking of nazis, check out twitter”
raven
The Indians in 13!!!!
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Mnemosyne: Screw the trolls. They had no valid point in the first place, and even less now.
How’s everybody doing?
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
Let them excuse one set of emails while insisting that the other set proves something they don’t?
Nope.
Anne Laurie
@Mike J:
I’m actually prepping another post about that!
Mnemosyne
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
I had been wondering why we had a sudden influx of stubborn ones in the past couple of days. Now I think I know what they were trying to distract us from.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne: LET IT GO ALREADY.
Remember, nobody on this here blog is ban-proof.
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne:
Same way that youth camps hire pedophiles?
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
No. Dwelling on it in unrelated threads is unnecessary, please and thank you. If they show up, then spring into action.
jl
I’m afraid that there are too many rich people with too much money and power supporting alt-right (aka fascists and Nazis) for corporate media to ever call places like Breitbart what they are. Some of this is about pandering to the bigotry and racism of the rank and file dupes. Some of it is a certain kind of ruthless rich person who schemes and organizes to keep poorer people fighting with each other so a semi-fascist corporate social order can be preserved and extended. That latter bit will make it really hard for multi-national mega-corporations who run most of the news media to pretend it is all that upsetting or bad.
One way to handle it is to ramp up the bothesidesdoitism until we have concerned what-aboutism on the topic of the dangerous lefty Joe Manchin to balance those crazy stunts of those hip Daily Caller and Breibart fratrats when those dang kids take their pranks a little too far.
scott alloway
@Bruuuuce: Fuzzie Wuzzie? Edit. Sarcasm here.
Bruuuuce
@scott alloway: He’s a bear? I don’t think so, in any sense, and CERTAINLY not the cute cuddly sort.
Steve in the ATL
@scott alloway: the term the Brits used to describe certain African tribes in the 19th century? This blog is getting seriously retro!
NotMax
@Bruuuuce
Wooly bear, maybe?
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne:
And maybe when that next influx comes you can ignore them like they deserve, and not write a hundred posts in response.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@jl:
FTFY. At least Manchin has an excuse.
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne:
I normally just lurk here but I genuinely believe that Bernie would have won and…no, it’s not ok even to mock recent trolls. Still too painful.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Dear god, don’t let it come to drop bears.
the Conster
Glenn Thrush went quiet on twitter in mid September. This is some revelatory shit for those who aren’t paying as much attention as we do – white supremacy is a helluva drug. THere’s so much coordination among these white guys to ally against Clinton and by extension women and Obama, and by extension blacks, that all goes back to Mercer and Putin. Dark Money starts out by describing how freaked out Mercer was by Obama’s 2nd landslide election. The Steele dossier mentions like 3 different times how much Putin hated Hillary and Obama because they boxed him in.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Obligatory!
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: You are cruel.
Adam L Silverman
Gonna be a lot more fallout:
And:
And give this a read, it’s where I found the tweets:
https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/boy-do-i-feel-naive-1819223797
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Been a rough day.
KS in MA
@raven: Yes!!!!
debbie
Ironic, then, that my Hassidic nephew thinks Milo is a genius.
Bruuuuce
@NotMax: It takes serious faith to believe Milo could ever morph into something useful and pretty. I ain’t got it.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
That goes directly into your permanent record, sir.
;)
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: Geez, I wonder if one front-pager has ever tried to ban another front-pager from commenting? (J/k of course!)
But on-that-off-topic, question for the younger/hipper folks here: has That Song joined the list of official lesbian anthems yet?
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Most likely the least damaging thing in there.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman: My granddaughter, now four, has been all Elsa all the time since before she turned two. It’s her favorite video and favorite song in the way of toddlers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: It is okay. You did it so I didn’t have to. Long week here too.
Ithink
Well @ least we have all the visual proof we need to designate them all neo-nazis & white supremacists amirite? As if any was needed for us here!
debbie
@raven:
I may have to start watching baseball again.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Depending on how the rest of the family feels about it, please select the following that best applies:
Sorry
Excellent
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I was a bit surprised you hadn’t done so before I showed up.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
To be more polite about it, c’mon. Let them actually say it first. No reason to descend to their level.
Steve in the ATL
@raven: Cleveland is my favorite AL team. Because they are the only one that the Braves could beat in a World Series. And we stole Kenny Lofton from them!
Bruuuuce
@raven: After the good guys blew a five-run lead, no less. The only consolation is that the damned Red Sox also got their coccyxes creamed by the Stros earlier and are also down 0-2.
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie:
Don’t look at me, I’m a gay person with Birkenstocks and formerly had a Subaru but I’m a dude alas.
Steve in the ATL
@Major Major Major Major:
Uh, pretty sure you’re a lesbian, but nice try
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I was trying to be good. I would have succumbed to my baser instincts eventually.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Flannel?
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Depends on time and distance.
If she’s 400 miles away in metro DC, it’s mommy’s and daddy’s problem.
mike in dc
Basically channeling racism and super-racism et al. (misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, anti-Semitism) for pageviews, politics and policy advancement. While they may have “watered down” the most extreme stuff, they nonetheless did “launder” that white supremacism into the political and cultural mainstream. Insert poison/virus/cancer metaphor here.
Frankensteinbeck
@Anne Laurie:
Not that I’ve heard from my most aggressively, proudly lesbian friends. Let It Go is super popular with victims of child abuse, though.
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman: when I look at the Facebook feeds of my friends with daughters younger than mine, every single birthday party is Elsa-themed. The dads are all ready to kill themselves.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: i heard the woman who with her husband wrote those songs tell a story one time on the radio. She was at the disney store to get some presents, and told the cashier she was an employee and showed her card for the discount. The cashier says oh, what do you do? She said I write songs. The cashier says oh, which ones? She says I wrote the Frozen soundtrack. The cashier says (imagine leaning in with a glower) “whyyyyyyyyyyy….!”
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Ha!
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
The directors of the film say they started apologizing to parents about six months after it was released, and they haven’t stopped yet.
debbie
@Steve in the ATL:
With my niece, it was Little Mermaid. My brother was miserable.
dmsilev
@Anne Laurie: If you want something a bit more in depth than a set of tweets, try this Ars Technica article and links therein.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
It was a slow day at work with a lot of waiting around.
Anne Laurie
@dmsilev: Thanks!
NotMax
@debbie
Did little, little girls of another generation run around singing “He’s a Tramp?
Quelle horreur to contemplate. ;)
the Conster
@mike in dc:
this. they’re obscene and amoral in a veneer of hipster media Kool Kids. They’re so careless in the way Fitzgerald meant, and need to be held in judgment.
efgoldman
I want something to eat; I don’t know what, but we don’t have it in the house.
But I’m definitely not motivated enough to get dressed and go out.
I’ll grovel around for a while and find something….
ETA: mrs efg is out playing in the woods with a couple of old friends and Manhattan mixture, with extra cherries. Old grumpy me doesn’t go camping.
Mnemosyne
@Steve in the ATL:
And yet Stephen Curry won the heart of every woman in America by knowing all of the lyrics to his daughter’s favorite Disney songs.
(Note: “Let It Go” is not featured.)
debbie
@NotMax:
No, because VCRs (and the ability to watch it over and over) hadn’t been invented yet.
Bruuuuce
@efgoldman:
Delivery?
dmsilev
The complicity as it were of more mainstream journalists here reminds me in a way of this story which I read this morning (warning: the story, which covers a fraternity hazing death, is both quite long and extremely rage-inducing). In both cases, you have members of a group, and they seem to regard membership in the group as the most important thing period, to the extent that when other members of the group do something bad, the first instinct is basically to just close ranks and try to act like nothing really happened.
Mike J
Hamilton to the top in FP3 with a track record! Go Ham, Lewlew!
efgoldman
@Bruuuuce:
Nope. Grub hub lists five places i my area – all red sauce pizza/sub shops.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: if you lived here you could walk down to the Korean grocery in your pajamas and buy an It’s-It.
Adam L Silverman
Hmmm….
Steeplejack
Jesus. Ari Melber just played a snippet from Sunday’s 60 Minutes where Trump digital director Brad Parscale talks about having Facebook and Twitter employees—”Republican” employees—embedded in the campaign’s offices. Holy shnikeys. Story here.
Bruuuuce
@efgoldman: Oh, well. Worth a thought.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Also obligatory:
Groucho48
@dmsilev:
It’s interesting that the article assumes that treating Nazis as un-American scum is a politically charged thing to do. The sad thing is, nowadays, he might be right.
Yutsano
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s better in the original Norge.
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman: You are just DETERMINED to make trouble tonight, arn’cha?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bruuuuce: I had a Friday night fish fry delivered today. I wanted trad, but couldn’t be arsed to go out. I did recruiting fairs at UW-Oshkosh and UW-Milwaukee this week. I am told that I am good at them, but still…. You have to be on all the time, not just when the extrovert mood strikes you.
Frankensteinbeck
@Steve in the ATL:
I think it’s the dress. Elsa looks different from the other princesses. Also seriously considering it’s attitude. Elsa comes off as much more defiant than previous Disney Princesses, who after declaring they don’t need a man to complete them quickly find a man to complete them.
the Conster
@Steeplejack:
Everything was coordinated, and the Steele dossier says Russian assets were in the Democratic Party structure. It’s all coming out.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: This actually broke about a month ago when they interviewed one of the other tech leads involved. She told the interviewer they got “white club” (actually on the audio, everyone thinks she meant white glove) treatment from Facebook and Twitter.
ETA: Here’s the link to the BBC interview with her. The video does autoplay.
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-40852227/the-digital-guru-who-helped-donald-trump-to-the-presidency
Adam L Silverman
@Anne Laurie: I can post more Disney musical vids if you like?
NotMax
@debbie
Um, there were these things called records.
@efgoldman
Been there, done that, ate the T-shirt.
;)
JGabriel
mike in dc:
It is.
Lyrebird
@NotMax: FWIW I thought you meant THIS song “he’s a tramp” — no doubt Hurby Love Bug and the MCs had seen the movie you’re talking about though.
MoxieM
@Mnemosyne: I’d guess it’s a ripe case of white male assholes failing upwards (into more highly paid jobs than actually qualified women generally get.)
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I have heard tell of things called 45s
Bruuuuce
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s exactly what delivery is for. A wide range of options is one of the perks of living in NYC, but comparing the state of food options now to those even twenty years ago in much of the country (far less the forty or so years past when I was a yout’) shows movement in the right direction.
Steve in the ATL
@Bruuuuce:
Knowing efgoldman, he’s also not motivated enough to put on pants so he can open the front door
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Good point.
Mnemosyne
@dmsilev:
That’s what happens with cops, too. And happened with the Catholic Church when they discovered that some of their priests were child molesters. And happened at Penn State. And so on and so on.
It’s human nature, unfortunately.
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
@Nero is Milo Yiannopoulos, for anyone who didn’t know. (I didn’t and had to look it up.)
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out for Olivia Nuzzi. She is a regular on the MSNBC evening shows.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
One of step-father’s favorite pieces of music was “The Airborne Symphony,” which he had on 78s – somewhere around 28 of them (or so it seemed) in the boxed set.
Put it all on reel-to-reel tape for him as a gift one year.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL:
1) I hope to someone’s, anyone’s Deity or Deities that he’s at least got the onion strategically placed.
2) What is it with old guys refusing to wear pants?
Steve in the ATL
@Adam L Silverman:
QUICK–WHO HAS THE BANHAMMER?!?!?!
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: The leader of my little social coterie in my battalion was our Jewish S-3. We were the horrible, posh, West Point and fancy college crowd for the most part. CPT/MAJ [redacted] camped.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Amazing how every college kid today is warned to scrub their social media accounts before they go on job interviews lest they lose the job offer thanks to something dumb they posted, but professional journalists leave this stuff out in plain sight.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: Yep. This should be interesting to see what happens with her.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
That would be telling.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: 78s? Damn.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: I have the ban hammer!
Duane
I became aware of this Milo scum when Juju Chang interviewed him for Nightline. Within moments, I was yelling “stop the interview and slap the shit out of him.” A more vile, despicable creature does not exist.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Obligatory.
Crashman
This Breitbart story is horrific and terrifying in so many ways; I hope this bombshell will lead to some good things but it’s 2017 so I’m not holding by breath…
But I gotta say, for a guy who’s constantly accusing liberals of being easily triggered snowflakes, Milo’s response to this is some incredibly weak sauce. Come on, man. I thought only snowflake SJWs gave such lame CYA excuses.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: That was not oblig at all… What were you thinking?
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne: @debbie: @efgoldman: we went through some brutal Barney and Teletubbies periods, but also a pretty funny phase when my 11-year old daughter was obsessed with the Ike and Tina version of “Proud Mary”. A welcome break from kid songs, but also hilarious.
Mnemosyne
@Steve in the ATL:
You’re welcome. ?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Many actually do. It’s just a fun song. When I did my JRTC rotation at Hohenfells we were only the second team do a training center rotation. So no one was initially sure who we were/what we did. One of the Observer Controllers asked us about what we did, how we were prepared to operate. I played this for him and he laughed for about 20 minutes or so.
The head Mustang, however, could not get his head around the fact that we were the brigade’s attached cultural ops team. He was convinced we were some kind of assessment team sent from TRADOC. So he kept pulling me out of the scenario into planning and evaluation meetings. It was very frustrating. We’d explain it to him, the light bulb would start to go off and then fizzle out. Our ASO would do the same thing, same response. The BCT commander tried. Same response. The V Corps DCG even tried, same result. After about three or four days into a three week rotation we just said “fuck it” and I started going to training meetings in addition to actually trying to do my job as the cultural advisor and culture ops team lead attached to the brigade.
GregB
Leave Milo Yia-Nazi-opolous alone!
Anne Laurie
@Adam L Silverman:
Prostate / hemorrhoid issues? If you’re taking them down every half-hour anyways…
Seriously, I think at least part of it is that older guys get gut-heavy, and modern pants are designed to hang from something approximating a waist. So the choice is let the gut hang over the waistband, let the waistband ride up under their nipples, or give up & switch to suspenders / overhauls (NAMING NO NAMES).
Old-school kilts were more forgiving… but even modern kilts seem to mostly be dressed up with a shoulder swath that helps disguise the ravages of time & good living.
(No, observers, I don’t mean the sporran. The sporran is to weight down the front of the kilt, so that the wearer doesn’t show off his goolies… unintentionally.)
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne:
As it happens, the fraternity chapter in question was at Penn State. Didn’t seem to have any direct connection to the football program as far as I could see in the article.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
This is what happens when we allow non-frat boy lawyers on the blog. Lesson learned!
efgoldman
@Major Major Major Major:
If I lived in any real city it wouldn’t be a problem.
Mnemosyne
@Crashman:
As with all of these guys, the “snowflakes” and “participation trophy” stuff is just full-on projection of their own feelings. What is a Confederate statue but a giant participation trophy? Robert E. Lee came in second in the war — good for him for trying!
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
Family moved when I was three. Every cheesy home movie filmed indoors in which I appear from before then has, someplace in the background, a Victrola playing a record. The same record: “Schubert’s Merry Music.”
Record ‘mysteriously’ went missing during the move.
efgoldman
@Adam L Silverman:
Betcher toochus
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Two things: 1. Hohenfels was a hoot. 2. People like you can confuse the fuck out of simple soldiers. If some one is a “I am decent at my job, I will collect the normal medals, and go to my 20 year retirement” officer, they won’t get you.
efgoldman
@Steve in the ATL:
I’ve got your pants
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Yep!
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Prefer this one:
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack:
First I heard of Nuzzi was when she got Anthony Weiner to, uh… demonstrate his least attractive social habits. Figured her then for a professional (journalistic) assassin, and a would-be NextGen Maureen Dowd.
My guess is that she’ll lie low (or be made to stay low-profile) for a few weeks, and if nothing more directly incriminating comes out, this minor embarrassment will go down the Media Villiage Idiot memory hole. Helped by the fact that she isn’t the only one caught out in these emails — and there’s probably worse stuff from bigger names gonna drop in the next few days…
For the record, I actually enjoy reading Nuzzi most of the time; as long as you accept that she’s only commissioned when “somebody” needs to be taken out, she’s usually worth scanning.
efgoldman
@NotMax:
We had the 1976 LP version at the radio station. The record companies got all kinds of grants in the mid-70s to record American music. Bernstein conducted, I think.
I put it on the air one night – anything ~45 minutes was useful on an overnight show.
What a terrible piece of dreck. Just awful. Never got aired again. The actual physical vinyl might have become damaged.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I have a subscription to “Betcher Toochus and Gardens”.
I’ll see myself out…
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: He was an O6. Had been an infantry battalion commander. Running the training cadre at Hohenfells was his O6 level command. Good guy. Meant well. Easily confused. Part of the problem is that our program office for training sent two folks from Leavenworth several months in advance. They were supposed to brief the training cadre on us and that we were coming and then go to Smith Barracks and do the same for the BCT commander and command staff. They did neither. They got the scenario from the scenario writers, then took a seven day vacation throughout Germany and then came home. Waste, fraud, and abuse. Two of the dumbest folks I’ve ever met.
The only good that came of it is I had the scenario 40 days in advance. So I was able to build dozen of products and hand them off as soon as I got there. And helped create and cement the impression that I worked magic.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
They can draw it ’til the cows come home, still that is not the Big Red Cheese’s cape.
(Never could quite figure out how Solomon elbowed his way into the pantheon. I know why he’s there; it’s still a stretch and a half.)
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
I made a special trip this afternoon to the Celebrity Delly [sic] to get a big, juicy sandwich: hot pastrami, melted provolone, Russian dressing on toasted rye. Almost the “Mighty Milty,” but no coleslaw. Yum.
efgoldman
@Anne Laurie:
As you know, because we’ve met IRL, i wear braces for just that reason.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: Hey, I *said* I was naming no names!…
Jackie
@Bruuuuce: My dad turned 99 last week. He’s thriving and living in his home of 59 years. His last name is Houston, so our family is cheering for Houston’s first WS ?
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
You have to put them on and then you have to take them off. It’s a lot of fucking work.
Omnes Omnibus
Walking away from a fight. Have a good evening,
Ruckus
@Duane:
Hate to break this to you, but yes, yes they do.
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
Maybe the 60 Minutes exposure will penetrate the awareness of old, white middle America.
efgoldman
@Ruckus:
For no good reason
NotMax
@Steeplejack
It’s an open secret in show biz that Uncle Milty was indeed mighty – in one bodily area.
efgoldman
@Steeplejack:
Kosher-style deli we no got. We DO have terrific Italian delis and bakeries. This afternoon I had a sammich on a fresh bakery hard roll: Imported prosciutto, mild cappocola, imported sharp provolone. Yum.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Not a fan of the Nu52, but that was the best clip on youtube. I much prefer the Alex Ross version:
https://pbmo.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/shazam-by-alex-ross.jpg
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/shazam/images/3/36/Shazam_and_Superman.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090621195755
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/92/b0/6f/92b06fac60f019e5379794e7d725d437.jpg
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
OT: I was hoping anyone here could some research questions I have for a story. I can’t find online when the San Francisco PD SWAT team was actually created. I’m also wondering what kind of weapons and equipment an early 80s SWAT team would have had. I always like accuracy and detail in books I read so it follows that I would like that in ones I write.
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
If you’re not going outside in the foreseeable future, eh, why bother?
My trip to the deli today was my first public appearance in about four days. I did remember to wear pants. And I was awesomely productive: I got the car washed and got batteries put in three watches.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Folks had a bunch of 78s. That’s what they had for recorded music, as you well know. That is after those Edison cylinders.
Any way I have them stored away as I couldn’t give them away the first time I tried and now I believe it’s difficult to find a player that does 78s. I’m sure not looking.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Fucking exactly.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Ross is A-OK (not quite up there with the died way too young Don Newton) for modern-day depiction, but give me C. C. Beck any day.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne, @Adam L Silverman:
Hey, I admit I have occasionally fantasized about Olivia Nuzzi cosplaying Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, but, Christ, this is hitting a little too close to home.
But let me know if any pics or videos show up.
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
Why does everyone hate Let It Go*? I like it. I even learned the words in German.
Ich lass los, lass jetzt los
Die Kraft, sie ist grenzenlos …
*Yes, I do know why: Dang that shouty chorus.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
You have to learn to spread it out. That’s about 2 weeks worth of stuff there. And besides what the hell do you need a watch for? Last time I wore one was to make sure I got to radiation treatment on time. Other than that I see no point.
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
Heh, I may have to introduce this into my niece’s ecosystem. She’s just turning three and seems to be on a steady diet of Bubble Guppies and Xuxa (one Brazilian parent).
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne:
This Berniebro’s got no problem with Trumpanistas outing themselves as scum. Your prediction come true?
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Cause the wise Greek god was a goddess?
What’s interesting is Ross’s take on the character and his powers. In the Justice trilogy, in an internal monologue, he’s got Cap/Billy explaining the power sets/what he gets as an avatar of each deity, demigod, or Solomon. He describes the power of Zeus as less of physical strength and more of a drive. The quote is:
Ross get’s the character, his look, his concept, better than almost any other writer and artist I’ve seen.
NotMax
@NotMax
Guess I ought to include a link or two to Newton’s style, which was a radical change for ol’ Cap at the time yet still beholden to the classic Cap. #1 – #2
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@LanceThruster:
The problem is you’ve already outed yourself as scum.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: One can only hope. Or scream.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: I’m glad someone had a good day!
I washed and waxed my car about two weeks ago. So in between hurricanes.
Mnemosyne
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
I would bet that they have a police museum or historical society in SF. I would try those search terms and see if there’s someone you can email.
Steve in the ATL
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: dude, don’t feed the troll
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Newton did great art. And Beck was of course the creator. I like Ross’s art in general. As much as I like some of the stylized art, say Darwyn Cooke’s, Ross’s art looks like it could step off the page. And as I said in 153, he certainly gets the character.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Tell it to the innocent shepherdesses and milkmaids populating the plains surrounding Mt. Olympus.
;)
Another painterly artist I could see doing a fine job with the character is Steve Rude.
Duane
@Bruuuuce:efg is so old, delivery is where he kept his horse.
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: Great, now I’ll never be able to unsee that. Not that its a bad image… She is a stunning woman. But apparently she’s alt-right curious.
Steeplejack
@Ruckus:
Truth.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Mnemosyne:
I’ll try and do that. From my casual research, I’ve figured out a lot about the kind of weapons used by SWAT teams in the 60s and 70s (bolt-action rifles). It was a lot more rag-tag. Not much info on the time period I’m interested in however.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: That would work. Jerry Ordway did a good job with drawing the character when he was the artist for Justice Society and the Power of Shazam.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
The original run of Nexus was Tony the Tiger “Gr-r-r-r-eat!”
Steeplejack
@Ruckus:
The watches were for my young brother-in-law. He just started working as a public school teacher and found that he needs a watch for a quick way to tell time. Can’t always drag out the cell phone while he’s grappling with special-needs grade-schoolers. So I volunteered to take his dead Swatches and get them revived.
I must say that I do like to wear a wristwatch when I’m out and about. It’s one of the few ways that a gentleman can accessorize.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Public school classroom without a clock on the wall?
How far we have fallen…
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: The black and whites or the actual run?
tobie
@Steeplejack: My understanding of the Facebook embed story may be wrong but I from what I heard tonight I gather that Facebook routinely sends company representatives to the firms that have purchased ads on Facebook to show them how to use the system, find their target audience, etc. One person suggested that the Trump campaign made better use of Facebook than the Clinton campaign. That may well be true…I wouldn’t know having made the decision never to open an account on the Book of Faces. But my bet would still be that the Russians ran PR on Facebook and elsewhere for the Trump campaign. Brad Pascale simply didn’t sound smart enough to craft a devilishly smart ad campaign based on incredible data analysis. In fact he sounded like something of a doofus. He had help from experienced intelligence operatives with staffs to do the kind of number crunching needed.
Steeplejack
@Ruckus:
Also true. But I’ve been a complete slug lately, and now I’m under time pressure because I’ve got out-of-town visitors coming in Sunday night. So I had to up my game. But it was an exhausting ordeal.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman,?a>
Both. Had completely forgotten about the 3-issue trial series.
Duane
@Ruckus: I suppose you’re right. Still, she should’ve slapped the shit out of him.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Not just the classroom. Taking them to counseling, taking them to physical therapy, taking them to the office, picking them up when they get to school, taking them out to be picked up after school, etc. He works with a group of autistic and severely ADHD kids.
ETA: It’s not a traditional “classroom” situation.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: There’s actually a subplot for several issues of Justice Society about this. Powergirl keeps flirting with Captain Marvel and he gets crossfooted over and over. No one on the team at that point knows he’s actually a 16 year old.
NotMax
@NotMax
Both Judah (née Fred) and Dave Maccabee were wonderful creations as well as Thunes of distinction.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Ya never know what’s going to come from following a mysterious cloaked stranger into an abandoned subway tunnel…
:)
Sister Golden Bear
@Major Major Major Major: If you play softball and make hummus as well, we’ll make you an honorary lesbian.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
Always associate Ordway with the super group that dare not use its acronym.
All-Star Squadron.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Yep.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Infinity Inc.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
A series which lost its way.
Not nearly as rapidly as the barely later New Guardians, but quickly nonetheless.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
I see the problem.
First, I’m no gentleman.
Second, accessorizing? I go out, I’ve got pants on, I’m pretty much done.
Ruckus
@Duane:
No doubt. None whatsoever.
I like a civil society. But racist fucks really don’t allow that.
Anne Laurie
@tobie:
Any time over the past forty-some years, I’ve been amazed at how a not-so-bright code monkey can do incredible damage once someone more clue-ful has pointed them in the right direction. Give a nerd a big enough machine-hammer…
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
Have to say that I have 4 or 5 watches, or had. 2 or 3 were cheap Timex pieces that I think cost about $10-12 each but you couldn’t even replace the batteries. And it would have cost more than they were worth. I thew them out. I traded one nice watch for a battery for the one I have left and threw the other away because it wouldn’t run even with a new battery. So I do have a watch, but I had to wear one every day for 11 yrs, which is why I had so many. Time is really flexible now that pants aren’t required every minute of the day so I no longer wear one.
Ruckus
@Anne Laurie:
Destruction is always so much easier than construction.
Steeplejack
@Ruckus:
I like to add a bit of bling to the clueless old geezer image.
Steeplejack
@Ruckus:
I still have a miscellany of mostly cheap watches collected over the years. I do have a nice Seiko. I don’t wear a watch around the house, just when I go out. And sometimes I forget. I just like watches (and clocks) as machined creations.
NorthLeft12
@Major Major Major Major: I am sure those passwords were coincidentally related to Nazi/anti-semitic events. You know how hard it is to come up with passwords that you can ever remember……hey, wait a minute………nevermind.
Matt McIrvin
@Ithink: Too late, being a Nazi is officially OK now.
J R in WV
I have an LL Bean pocket watch, so I could tell when to head out of the woods on a cloudy day. But I gave up wristwatches when I realized I was looking at it every 90 seconds… no one needs to do that, but it was fast becoming a compulsion.
Then I realized that my car AND all my computers have clocks, so into a drawer it went. When we moved into the new house from the old JennyLind farmhouse, it never showed up. Still have the pocket watch, still comes in handy from time to time.
Matt
On the upside, it’s clear where the first chunk of cash to clean up the GOP’s mess should come from: expropriate the fucking Mercers etc so hard they squeak.