Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Their freedom requires your slavery.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Hot air and ill-informed banter

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

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

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The next time the wall wtreet journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Most Interesting Thing You Will Read Today

The Most Interesting Thing You Will Read Today

by | 120 Comments

This post is in: 

Apparently getting square dancing recognized as the state dance of most states is a racist and anti-Semitic plot devised in part by Henry Ford:

Weird.

Reader Interactions

120Comments

  4. 4.

    Feathers

    Am now doubly proud to have gone through multi racial schools where the square dancing unit in gym included AfAm line dances and various European folk dances, including the hora. I still can’t hear Kool & the Gangs “Too Hot” without being dragged back in time to the seventh grade and those creepy one peice gym uniforms. Do kids still wear gym uniforms?

    I thought the piece was a bit over the top in terms of hating on the square dance. There certainly was a great deal of community level dancing, basically in square formation, long before the 40s. Hadn’t really thought of it before, but what “square dancing” did was make the dancing generic “white” rather than a specific ethnicity. They were erasing Eastern European and Scandinavian identies, too. Not so much erasing, as fitting them inside the idea of whiteness.

    ETA It always seemed pretty clear to me that square dance was there for something to do in the bad weather when you couldn’t go outside.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    Here’s hoping folks in Missouri, whatever their affiliation, aggressively push back against this egregious practice.

    Gov. Eric Greitens and his senior staff use an app that deletes text messages after they’ve been read, raising concerns among transparency advocates that it could be used to subvert Missouri open records law.

    The app, called Confide, allows someone to send a text message that vanishes without a trace after it is read. It also prevents someone from saving, forwarding, printing or taking a screenshot of the text message.

    Because the app is designed to eliminate a paper trail, it is impossible to determine whether the governor and his staff are using it to conduct state business out of view of the public, or whether they’re using it for personal and campaign purposes.

    Self-destructing messages also mean there is no way to retain texts to decide whether they should be considered a public record. Source

  7. 7.

    Davebo

    Thursday Nights at my old favorite Tex Mex place had at least a dozen to 20 square dancers show up. Fabulous! Youngest was 70 or so, all in full regalia drinking Margaritas and enjoying life.

    If only I can do that at 70. Minus bolo tie.

  8. 8.

    sharl

    I wonder if Henry Ford would have had mixed feelings about Angela Davis – yes, THAT Angela Davis – loving square dancing in her early years. The excerpt attached to this tweet is funny and stereotype-breaking:

    This story from Angela Davis's new book of interviews and speeches rules pic.twitter.com/ni2qiFi3zN— Shuja Haider (@shujaxhaider) November 27, 2017

  10. 10.

    ThresherK

    Starting in college, I dated several women I met square dancing. In the wilds of suburban New England, no less. The last one is now Spousal Ms ThresherK.

    We have not square danced in a long time, and with her knee, little dancing of any type at all.

    I can’t imagine how patriotickal the trappings of square dancing have become since 9/11.

    We went on to dabble in more ballroom. However, square dancing did serve its purpose.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    Freshmen orientation activities at college included an evening of square dancing.

    I’m not one into dancing of any sort* but as a one time only experience it wasn’t horrible.

    *Can barely manage what might be described as rhythmic posing, plus dancing means I have to put down my drink.       ;)

  14. 14.

    ThresherK

    @MomSense: I hope her other knee gets replaced (first one was a year ago) so we can do that again.

    At some point we found the contra dance folks were more to our liking, and the dancing easier in the technical sense.

  16. 16.

    Peale

    I’m glad that Wisconsin seems to have gone with the polka. Even when I had to take square dance in junior high, we knew it was something done by cowboys, and there weren’t any cowboys in Wisconsin.

  17. 17.

    sharl

    @RedDirtGirl: Best wishes on a useful and/or satisfying twitter experience. I love twitter myself – a little too much – but I totally understand it when others are quickly put off by it.

    I’m sure it helps that I’m a guy, so – like everywhere else – I don’t get the hassles and abuse that women seem to get more often (of course your chosen twitter identity and the content of your tweets don’t have to reveal your gender or any other personal identifying information to others on twitter; only twitter hq itself might need some of that, via what registration information is required).

    Should it seem necessary, I would recommend not being reluctant to use the ‘Block’ or ‘Mute’ options with troublesome accounts – your account is your place!*

    I’ve seen people say of Twitter, “I can’t believe this site is free!” (though sometimes said ironically).
    I’ve also seem it referred to as “the hell site”.
    I have felt both of these sentiments, sometimes in close succession** (**if that’s the proper word).

    *FYI/FWIW, potential advantage of using ‘Mute’ is that the account being muted doesn’t get any notice that you’ve done that. They may only start to wonder if they’re, say, 20 tweets into a long rant, then suddenly notice you are not responding, at which point they’ll often sulk off in frustration. There is a weird subset of trolls that gets off on being blocked.
    But hopefully you’ll go a long way without having to face such annoying types.

  18. 18.

    Duane

    @NotMax: Our governor, in office less than a year, is already out of control. He rigged the education commission board so he could fire the respected commissioner. He’ll try to install a puppet, and contnue his assault on public schools.
    To no one’s surprise, he’s friends with Devoss. Like Trump, he’s a con man. Greiten’s campaign ad featured him firing an AK-47 and grinning like the sociopath he is.

  20. 20.

    Mike J

    @RedDirtGirl:

    I’m taking my first forays into the twitter-verse. I Confess to being a bit trepidatious!

    Follow John, Doug, and Cheryl. There’s a buncha people from LGM worth following.

    I’d like to follow more people, but twitter insists on polluting my timeline by telling me what other people liked but didn’t retweet. I have a hard time keeping up as it is, and could follow more people if Twitter didn’t give me crap I don’t want. I want tweets or retweets from people I follow, in chronological order. That’s all. Nothing else.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m slightly annoyed by the slam on contra dance people who use prerecorded music. When you’re meeting twice a month, live musicians get freakin’ expensive!

    Not that I’m going back to my English Country Dance nights anytime soon. Sigh. And just when I was getting the hang of Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot, too.

  27. 27.

    MomSense

    @ThresherK:

    I hope she can dance again after she gets a new knee. I enjoy the music at the contra dances. Some of the women have fabulous costumes.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @Nicole:

    When I started working on my historical novel, I discovered that there are at least a half-dozen local groups that do English country dancing, which is pretty similar. You may want to look around for contra dance or English/Scottish country dance groups in your area.

  29. 29.

    Mike J

    @Feathers: One piece gym uniforms? Guessing that was for the girls.

    Our gym uniforms were super hot because they were basically two t-shirts, one sewn inside the other. Easily reversible so you could play black v gold (school colors) rather than shirts v skins. But every day you were wearing two t-shirts.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    This has to be seen to be believed. Holy crap this was bad!

  33. 33.

    Yarrow

    Square dancing is good for people who don’t know how to dance because there’s someone there telling you what to do!

  37. 37.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: Is there a summary? I can’t bring myself to watch almost ten minutes of Trump. The PBS tweet summary doesn’t sound that bad. Was there something in particular?

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: All of it Katie!

    He turned the event into a campaign pop about the veterans being back with him every year for the next 7 years in addition to this one. Then he made some screwball remark about the cry was “remember Pearl Harbor”, which it wasn’t and then he did the “I just learned that yesterday thing” and turned and asked that vet if they’d ever heard that before.

  40. 40.

    Lyrebird

    @Adam L Silverman: @Feathers:

    FWIW, our elementary school music book had the Tumbalalaika song (aka Shteyt a bocher) listed as a Russian song. If Feathers is John Cole’s age or older, I can believe they might have said the hora was European, too.

  41. 41.

    BlueDWarrior

    To say I’m agitated right now would be an understatement.

    Stupid Falcons and stupid refs and to hell with TNF. Going to be bitter about this for at least a couple of days.

  43. 43.

    Princess Leia

    My dad was a square dance caller -and all of us kids danced. When I was in my late teens I was off to a dance, dressed in the big skirt and full, full petticoat that was de rigeur. This was the early 70s, so the skirt was also relatively short. Too bad for me then when my car broke down on the side of the freeway. I had to walk a mile or so to the next off ramp to get help. I am so lucky that no one ran me over as they laughed their way down the interstate. Haven’t square danced since. And now I find out it was all a plot! Sheesh.

  45. 45.

    Lyrebird

    @Adam L Silverman: Yep.

    Wish I’d taken pictures of the faces of the first several Russian exchange students I met while I was asking them about this fun song I remembered from school. They had never heard of it.

    Peace all!

  47. 47.

    amygdala

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s a good thing I don’t celebrate the holiday, or you’d be permanently off my Hanukkah list, young man.

    Good grief, where to start?

    1) Who wrote that ahistorical, shallow wreck of a speech? Miller? As always, can someone please take his *&@! adverbs away from him? Gah.
    2) Could he have walked around the desk to shake each of their hands for real, rather than reaching over the way he did?
    3) Of course he had to make it all about him, but the obsession with seven more years suggests someone’s feeling a little threatened by Mueller.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Tehanu: He turned the event into a campaign pop about the veterans being back with him every year for the next 7 years in addition to this one. Then he made some screwball remark about the cry was “remember Pearl Harbor”, which it wasn’t and then he did the “I just learned that yesterday thing” and turned and asked that vet if they’d ever heard that before.

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Then you’re going to be very upset with me, because I’m here to report that Doug Jones’ campaign has preemptively suppressed the African American vote in Alabama!

    https://www.theroot.com/a-racist-flyer-might-cost-doug-jones-the-election-becau-1821065764

    The above photo is not a stock photo or an image created by The Root’s art department. It is an actual flyer circulating around from the Doug Jones for Senate Committee in his run against Elmer Fudd wannabe and schoolgirl aficionado Roy Moore for Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat, and it has upset black voters across Alabama.

    Someone, probably a white man, thought that the image would resonate with black people and motivate them to get out the vote. It’s as if black people were considering voting for the child molester until some brilliant strategist posited, “What if he were black, though?” The flyer is reductive in its oversimplification of the black mind as only caring about black issues. While it might not be racist, it is certainly racist adjacent.

    It is also the Democratic Party.

    Part of the reason the Democratic Party has been marginalized as a party that only exists on the coasts and in urban areas is white-mannery like this. While the policies of the party may be more progressive and black-friendly, the Democratic leadership is often as prejudiced and shortsighted as its Republican counterparts, and next week’s Senate election is the perfect example.

    The Democratic Party is trash. It is the reason Hillary Clinton lost. It is the reason Donald Trump is president. It is the reason I might be represented in the U.S. Senate by a grown man who probably went to see Twilight in the theaters and stood by the candy counter asking teenage girls if they wanted a sugar daddy.

    Until the stories surfaced about Roy Moore’s predilection for prepubescent ponytail wearers, the Democratic Party had wholly abandoned Alabama. It treated minorities and Democratic-leaning whites in the South like every black character in horror movies: necessary casualties left behind for the greater good.

    The party only campaigns in already-Democratic strongholds for the scant few electoral votes during presidential elections, and the rest of the time it ignores them completely.

    On the rare occasions when the Democratic Party does address black voters, it only talks about the “black issues”: policing, mass incarceration, civil rights, etc. For the party leadership, black people aren’t whole people who have the same concerns about taxes, job creation, education initiatives, international policy and economics as other voters. They are simply bodies collected in the coffers of the party’s ineffective longing for power.

    Now that Dems think Doug Jones has a decent chance to pick up a Senate seat, they have turned to Alabama’s black electorate as if they were in the state the entire time. Furthermore, the only argument they have made in their efforts to convince black voters to vote for Jones is that one thing he did for black people that one time. Every solicitation is the same: “Remember when he convicted the racists who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church? See? He’s down!”

    Edward Bowser, a Birmingham resident, said it best:

    Maybe it’s because, like most reasonable, thoughtful Alabamians, I really want Jones to win—and believe me, scandal or not, his victory is far from guaranteed. This state is redder than the bottom of Cardi B’s shoes, after all. But Jones’ campaign has done such a poor job speaking to the black community that my passion has fizzled. Severely. And this isn’t a new predicament. WashPo and other news outlets might now just be picking up on the trend, but black voters have long been discouraged.

    I appreciate what Doug Jones did in prosecuting KKK members in the deaths of four innocent girls. But when that’s the one and only message of black interest coming from your campaign, it shows an extreme disconnect.

    More at the link!

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    @Tehanu

    Gorge rising enough snippet?

    President Trump on Thursday described Pearl Harbor in a way that it’s never been described before, calling the surprise bombing of Hawaii in 1941 a “pretty wild scene.”

    “George, George, thank you George,” Trump said during his remembrance speech, turning to one of the veterans standing behind him. “That was a pretty wild scene. You’ll never forget that, right?” Source

  68. 68.

    Redshift

    @RedDirtGirl:

    I’m taking my first forays into the twitter-verse. I Confess to being a bit trepidatious!

    I’d suggest finding stuff other than politics to get started. I feel that I like Twitter better than many people because I got on it for science-related stuff initially, so I saw “interesting discussions” first, rather than “interesting discussions plus shouting and trolling.” NASA has the best organizational social media.

    I’m @Redshift42, btw.

  69. 69.

    danielx

    @NotMax:

    Latest celtic/irish fest this past fall, t shirt slogan: makin’ white men dance since 1494.

    I would add ‘badly’ to the end of that line, actually.

  71. 71.

    Aleta

    @Mike J: I’m no expert, but I believe you can set filters to avoid everything except from people you follow. (Ads show up, but not too much.)

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’ve seen people on this very website make the point that Obama would never have been elected if he had the same marital history as Donald Trump.

    However, it may be one of those observations that only people inside the affected group are allowed to make, because it just comes across as a special kind of racist when a white guy says it.

  79. 79.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s really disappointing. I clicked through and checked the image. It must be cropped because there isn’t anything on it about Doug Jones campaign or the election or anything. Are we sure it’s from his campaign and not a ratfucking?

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yarrow:

    The frustrating part is that I can see that they didn’t consciously intend to be racist, but their giant racial blind spot caused them to end up creating something that was really, really racist. I know whar they wanted to say, but they fucked their message up, bigly.

  86. 86.

    Major Major Major Major

    Wow, TenguPhule and Cacti were 15.7%(!) of the Franken threads today.

    I… I was curious. Don’t look at me like that.

    ETA: They were the top 2 commenters by a wide margin, typical pareto distribution

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Like I said above, it’s a common (and true) meme I’ve seen from Black people — white men get away with shit that Black men never would, especially in politics. The Jones campaign tried to repurpose that existing meme for their campaign and only managed to create something that’s really, really racist.

    I say it’s not intentionally racist because I don’t think it’s meant to stir up racist feelings against Black people. But there are a whole lot of ways to be unintentionally racist if you’re not careful, and this is Exhibit A.

    ETA: And just to be clear, I’m not saying “unintentionally racist” as an excuse. I’m saying, “Wow, they created something that’s really fucking racist even though they may not have meant to. They need to apologize, pronto.”

  96. 96.

    GregB

    There was a similar hyperventillating reaction to something allegedly racist done by Northam before the VA election. If anyone voted for the Confederate pederast over Jones because of that, they are idiots.

    John Lewis is campaigning with him.

  99. 99.

    Major Major Major Major

    @GregB:

    There was a similar hyperventillating reaction to something allegedly racist done by Northam before the VA election.

    He said he would ban sanctuary cities or something, which unlike this would actually have an effect on anybody and was legit troubling as policy.

  102. 102.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Strangely, I had lunch from there today — we ordered in at work. IMO they’re probably the best overall restaurant at the Americana. And the little Taiwanese (?) bakery next door is pretty good, too.

    Now all you have to do is get a sandwich and some potato balls from Porto’s and you will have had the complete Glendale experience.

  103. 103.

    Mr. Kite

    Isn’t this a common ratfucking modus operandi? Cooler heads and find out for real before releasing the hounds.

  108. 108.

    sharl

    @Redshift: Yep, judiciousness in who you follow on Twitter is always good practice, especially when new to it.

    But seeing as I’m not good at following good advice, I follow hundreds of accounts on my main feed. But I rarely go there anyway, except when I feel like browsing. Instead I use Lists. I have a lot of them, but nearly all are set to “Private”, and I only follow a few of those. I have one list which holds 30 or so of my favorite accounts, which is what I visit most.

    A couple things about twitter lists:
    (1.) They can be used for malicious purposes, which is why some accounts state up front that they don’t want to be included on them. For example, if you get a Notification saying “you have been added to the list Stupid Libtard Loozurs” (or whatever), that list might then be used by trolls to target you. So both as a courtesy and because I don’t want most of my lists public anyway, I set them to ‘Private’ (the default option is ‘Public’). My only public lists are (a.) for noncontroversial content, and (b.) only contain accounts who clearly want maximum visibility
    (2.) I like the option “Tweets with Replies” for individual accounts – I like following conversations – and Lists don’t accommodate that option. So I use multiple tabs – (usually just) one with my favorite list, and several other tabs following individual accounts using the ‘Tweets with Replies’ option.

    My twitter habit is bad enough, but at least I don’t have to live the life of professional journalists and media types who have to follow LOTS of different people at the same time. Depending on how much you get into it, you’ll find that some accounts are particularly useful as aggregators of content you like from multiple accounts, in which case following them makes things a bit less arduous.

  111. 111.

    SFBayAreaGal

    When I was in junior high school, social dancing was part of gym class for both boys and girls. We had to learn the fox trot, box step, swing, waltz and square dancing.

  113. 113.

    Yarrow

    @sharl: Thanks. Saw this in her Twitter feed:

    Worth noting—this mailer isn't subtle, but when we stopped by a barbershop in Birmingham to chat about the race last week I heard this exact sentiment & frustration. https://t.co/AvhlPMiikt— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) December 6, 2017

    Also this:

    Per Dem aide, major African American GOTV effort in AL this weekend—Reps. Terri Sewell, John Lewis, Cedric Richmond, Sanford Bishop, Sen. Cory Booker & fmr Gov. Deval Patrick will all be there campaigning for Jones #ALSen https://t.co/oeeGoB8MVH— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) December 6, 2017

    Also, this, which seems really low given the attention this election is getting.

    I'm told Alabama Secretary of State initially predicted 25% turnout in #ALSen, but after traveling state has lowered expectations to 20% b/c he's heard a lot of "frustration & exhaustion" from voters.— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) December 6, 2017

  114. 114.

    Yarrow

    Ugh. Stupid comment in moderation probably due to too many links. I’ll break it up.
    @sharl: Thanks. Saw this in her Twitter feed:

    Worth noting—this mailer isn't subtle, but when we stopped by a barbershop in Birmingham to chat about the race last week I heard this exact sentiment & frustration. https://t.co/AvhlPMiikt— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) December 6, 2017

    Also this:

    Per Dem aide, major African American GOTV effort in AL this weekend—Reps. Terri Sewell, John Lewis, Cedric Richmond, Sanford Bishop, Sen. Cory Booker & fmr Gov. Deval Patrick will all be there campaigning for Jones #ALSen https://t.co/oeeGoB8MVH— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) December 6, 2017

  115. 115.

    Yarrow

    Also, this, which seems really low given the attention this election is getting.

    I'm told Alabama Secretary of State initially predicted 25% turnout in #ALSen, but after traveling state has lowered expectations to 20% b/c he's heard a lot of "frustration & exhaustion" from voters.— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) December 6, 2017

  116. 116.

    sharl

    @Yarrow: Yeah, I haven’t seen enough about the dynamics of Black Democratic voters in Alabama to confidently form a strong opinion. I’ve seen some comments that Doug Jones is spending too much time running on his résumé, rather than what he would do for current voter needs. If that’s true, it’s a really good point, even given the fact that Jones’ résumé is really, really good. I would hope Jones has some politically sharp Black Alabamans on his campaign staff to get some decent advice.

    Joy-Ann Reid had a pretty good piece on this recently, clearly (and IMO properly) aimed at White lefty/liberal critics primed to dole out the blame in the event of a Jones loss –
    ………Don’t Blame Black Voters If Doug Jones Loses to Roy Moore: The Alabama Senate race is a referendum on Alabama, not on black Alabamans.

    If Roy Moore succeeds in becoming the next U.S. senator from Alabama, don’t blame black voters—blame Republicans. That’s according to black politicos in the state, who point out that the fate of the seat vacated by Attorney General Jefferson Sessions is, for the large part, out of their hands.

    The narrative that black voters can swing the seat for the Democrats has become a popular media meme, and, some fear, a ready-made excuse if the voters of Alabama send an accused serial child molester to Washington. Black Alabamians, who overwhelmingly support Moore’s opponent Doug Jones and whose political leaders are working toward a victory for him in the close-polling race, say “not so fast.”

    Reed lamented the fact that when it comes to elections garnering national attention, “it seems as though the black vote gets the blame if things don’t go a certain way but don’t get much of the credit when things work out the way the Democrats want it to.”

    Eric Guster, a politically active Alabama attorney, agreed. “It’s almost as if the national media wants to put this at the feet of the black community if Moore wins,” he said, adding that if the election goes the Republican’s way, the blame will lie in two places: with white Alabama voters, and with the Jones campaign.

    A response to your second tweet backed up the sentiment Reid found among some of the black Alabamans she talked to:

    It be great if @GDouglasJones make an appearance in all these communities and not rely only on surrogates. People want to hear and see the candidate. black Yankees ain't enough.— Minty Ross (@fillesdeharriet) December 8, 2017

    It was also noted in Reid’s piece that blacks make up only 25% of the Alabaman general electorate. They are overwhelmingly pro-Jones, and it will be awesome if they come out in huge numbers, but Alabama is soooo conservative (and white) that blacks there shouldn’t be dumped on if Jones loses.

    It seems like it will be close though, which in Alabama is quite remarkable. Best to Doug Jones!

Comments are closed.