I blame the media for Trump getting elected president — Murdoch media for creating and feeding the right-wing beast, CNN and MSNBC for giving Trump so much free coverage (especially during the primaries), and don’t get me started on the New York Times. I still say the worst offenders were, and still are, the both sides do it centrist pundits. I nominate this (from a centrist pundit at WaPo) as the worst tweet ever, equating Obama’s use of the word “horseshit” to describe policy with Trump’s use of the word “shithole” to describe countries inhabited by black people.
Screenshotted before he deletes pic.twitter.com/I8xuxJ1nr3
— ㅤㅤ (@dxckstep) January 11, 2018
But there are some real success stories in less traditional outlets. Buzzfeed’s news coverage is remarkably good, given that Buzzfeed began as a listicle producer. Here Ben Smith takes a well-deserved victory lap for publishing the Steele dossier:
Exactly one year ago BuzzFeed published what’s now known simply as “the dossier”: a set of reports put together by a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign. The 35-page dossier suggested that the Russian government had both compromised and colluded with President-elect Donald Trump.
[….]For all these reasons, the chorus of criticism of our decision to publish has faded. I haven’t had a single person approach me to say, “I wish I hadn’t read the dossier, and wish I had less insight into the forces at play in America.” Do you feel that way? Does anyone?
One more thing: thanks to everyone for donating so much money: 15K raised this month! Baby pictures to come later today.
randy khan
The people who don’t get that the furor over the Trump comments is not about his language but about what he meant by it are demonstrating that they’re not worth our attention.
Although this does affirm my belief that one reason to support Gillibrand for President is that she curses in public, just because it appears that she would annoy all of the right people.
dmsilev
@randy khan: Yeah, exactly. I’d much prefer a person with a good heart and a dirty mouth than the opposite.
(Trump, of course, has both a dirty heart and a dirty mouth)
schrodingers_cat
Brave NYT of the emailz fame is still calling the President’s words a vulgarity and acting like a prissy aunt.
Ridnik Chrome
@randy khan:
They know exactly what he meant by it, they’re just pretending otherwise, because that’s their job.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
While secretly being thrilled he’s so manly and decisive. They love Right wing bully- men. There’s no getting around it. They’re still mourning Chris Christie. Remember when Christie bravely took on the scourge of entitled preschool teachers?
I wasn’t aware that “babysitter” was a recognized insult. “You ….babysitter“. It’s like “scumbag” in some circles, apparently.
bystander
Twitler is on live eulogizing MLK. Too awful to watch. He’s sucking his teeth as if there were still a BigMac clogging his fangs.
Kay (not the front pager)
I’ve started thinking of pundits such as Josh Rogin and Chuck Todd as “the far center.” They are as extreme in their centrism as any far-left tweeter or RWNJ pundit.
germy
And beside the racism (which is horrible enough) is the ignorance: “Why don’t people from nice countries move here?”
Why should they? Why should a citizen of a country with universal healthcare and social safety net make their home here? So they can visit the rock and roll hall of fame in cleveland?
Aleta
-Telegraph
Amir Khalid
@germy:
I consider the Rock Hall a place of sacred things.
Kay
It’s important to remember that there are good, solid people and sometimes they act.
p.a.
crap, link issues again
germy
There was an article in my local newspaper about the number of house foreclosures in our little region. It was a number in the thousands. This news was presented very matter of factly; there was no shock or outrage, even when it was reported that most of these foreclosures occur when the homeowner has overwhelming medical bills.
Who the hell in Norway would ever say “Hey, let’s move to the U.S. It’d be exciting to take a gamble on losing my life savings and home in a medical emergency.”
“On the plus side, we could visit the rock and roll hall of fame whenever we wanted. Is there a special Gene Simmons wing?”
geg6
@Kay (not the front pager):
That’s a very good framing. I like it. I think I’ll steal it and use it as often as possible.
Chyron HR
@germy:
Not until they induct George Duke!
SiubhanDuinne
Speaking of newspapers, I’m at my corner movie theatre, about to see The Post. First day/first screening in widespread general release, and I’m really looking forward to it.
Okay, phone off for the next couple of hours!
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Unlike people who were assumed to be noble and good just because they wore the uniform and shiny epaulets.
p.a.
https://youtu.be/SKDX-qJaJ08
Trump’s next state dinner
Frankensteinbeck
@Ridnik Chrome:
I think a lot of them don’t. Having been raised around exactly this kind of message, I can tell you that your standard Southern Republican Racist does not understand that the comment in question is racist because he thinks it’s objectively true. They don’t make the connection that they’re revealing they think poverty is inherent in blackness. Therefor, the profanity is the only real problem, and liberals just like to throw around the word ‘racism.’
germy
@Amir Khalid:
I’ll agree when they recognize Link Wray.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: So only people from poor countries immigrate to the United States, is that what you are saying?
ETA: When I took my citizenship oath the biggest groups of people were from Canada and India respectively. (around 8 to 9 each according to my count)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The way the American media reacts to naughty language drives me fucking crazy in any event. I’m not surprised to see the Norman Bates-ish Erick Ericsson present to be in a snit over it, but a Washington Post columnist pretending this is about the “S word”… I have no words.
ETA: Andrea Mitchell issues a solemn “warning”… for anyone who has “children” watching political TV in the middle of the fucking day. Beam me the fuck up, Scottie.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: They call themselves race realists.
Kay
How do you work for a stone cold racist President and tell yourself you’re not one? I guess you make up some bullshit about “holding the line” or “mitigating the damage”.
Like a secret decent person behind enemy lines. A double agent. Very romantic. That “secret” part though- isn’t it indistinguishable from cowardice?
Brachiator
Horse puckey. This also implies that the magical media could somehow ensure the election of the “right” candidate. And that all citizens are ignorant rubes waiting to be led by their noses. This last is true of Bernie Bros and Steiniacs, but not other groups.
I kid about the Bernie Bros and Steiniacs.
OTOH, I agree about the worst tweet ever. The stupidity just makes you weary.
The Ancient Randonneur
David Leonhardt at the Vichy Times: Time to Say It: Trump Is a Racist.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Not unlike the filters in WP.
On the NPR news update at the top of the hour the news reader actually said “shithole”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: What I want to know is, how David Perdue and Tom Cotton got racist grampa all riled up, to get from “all we need is love”, which apparently Lindsey thought he was going to be dealing with, to “shithole”. We know the why. Somebody ask the Senators about their how.
hueyplong
It is mildly irritating that the writer of the Panama story feels the need to note that the resigning diplomat had beeen a Marine helicopter pilot, as though not having that kind of background would mean that his resignation and/or reasons therefor would be unworthy of mention, as a partisan attack or something.
The theme seems to be that criticism of Trump is invalid unless it comes from a traditionally conservative Republican.
This is apparently why we need my new heartthrob Jen Rubin so much. We should remember that when we’re erecting public shaming requirements for crossover columnists.
WaterGirl
Equating President Obama calling something horseshoe with The Illegitimate President calling countries shitholes displays the same willful refusal to comprehend basic reason and logic. The moment I see that from someone on BJ, I now add that person to the pie lists and the moment anyone one a media outlet displays that behavior and is not reigned in by that media outlet is the moment they can no longer be considered anyone worth listening to. They should be shunned.
Doug!
@Kay (not the front pager):
I like that, the “far center”.
marcopolo
Hello BJ folks. Spent much of yesterday calling/emailing folks to put pressure on my Governor to resign. I guess we will see how that plays out over the rest of the month. But right now I want to shout out to folks near St Louis that there is now a planned 2018 Women’s March here scheduled for Jan 20th. This is new information as of this morning.
I will be there, hopefully with most of the friends who marched last year. And the next day I will be writing GOTV postcards from 1-3 pm at a local coffee house. Perhaps I will see some of y’all at one or both of these activities. And if you know folks who live near the St. Louis metro area please pass this information along. Thanks.
MattF
It’s a basic fascist trope– “I’m only saying what everyone thinks.” Which is, no surprise, exactly what Tucker Carlson said.
So, now that we’ve broken the taboo on ‘racist’, how about the taboo on ‘fascist’?
Kay
I struggle with this, though. If it’s true then a large segment of Americans reduced America’s moral authority. This idea that there’s some “other” better America than the America that elected Trump seems to be excuse making. They admire this behavior. Are they not “America” as much as Martin Luther King is America? Can you pick and choose like this?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattF: I’ve been thinking of Maureen O’Hara in that John Candy movie from, I think, the 80s: “I tell it like it is”
ruemara
Since I’m angry, as an immigrant from one of these shithole Caribbean countries, here’s a picture of Hime Beribetto, being very catlike and musical, yet smol.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
A whole lot of Northern Republican Racists think the exact same thing. It’s hard to emphasize the extent to which they believe that this shit is reality and it’s the rest of us who aren’t willing to face the truth.
Schlemazel
@germy:
Have they ever recognizes Sister Rosetta Tharp? Until they do they are a sham. They are still a joke once they do but less so.
schrodingers_cat
To add to #21, there were people from Belgium, Germany, UK, Portugal and Italy taking the oath that day with me. I know at least two GC holders from Scandinavia (Norway and Denmark). America has been a beacon of hope for immigrants all over the world. So making blanket statements like why should people from Europe want to immigrate is not only inaccurate, but also insulting.
Doug!
@ruemara:
Which Caribbean country are you from?
Brachiator
@Aleta:
Good for him. I hope we see more of this.
Denali
We need to ask ourselves why Fox News appeals to so many people. As long there is a market for Fox News, it will continue to stay in business. We can’t just concede defeat by describing their listeners as brainwashed and irrational. Somehow we must find a way to cut through the cultural walls that have been errected around abortion and civil rights, or we are going to part ways as a country. It is very scary that we have become so divided.
Mike J
@Amir Khalid: Cleveland gave us the name rock and roll. Memphis is where blues, country, soul, and gospel fused to make the music.
Pere Ubu is not enough of a reason to have the hall in Cleveland
raven
@hueyplong: Yourpost is mildly irritating.
jimmiraybob
I’m starting to get the eerie feeling that the “Reichstag fire” will be the burning down of our entire government. All the rats are leaving the GOP and another Ambassador has quit. Like I said, eerie feeling.
Kay
Except the President of the United States, who is apparently some odd exception and not at all representative of the United States. He’s bad but we’re good. We retain our goodness no matter who we elect, just because we say so.
Ben Cisco
@Chyron HR: Rahmen!
Chip Daniels
@randy khan:
FIFY
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel:
I only have one of her albums because Fred Clark loves her music, but she’s definitely a hidden gem.
japa21
@hueyplong: Actually, I kind of get the reason for the Marine reference. The concept of being duty bound to your oath and to the CinC is pretty strong and if he not only can move away from his diplomatic oath but also his military sense of being duty bound, that really says a lot about how little he thinks of Trump.
ETA: or as raven said.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
Southern Republican Racist used to be Southern Democrat Racist. Let’s just call them plain old racists. And racists always think that their beliefs are “objectively” true. In the South, though, they also often like to add some biblical sauce.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Media gave Mr T an assist with their all emailz all the time coverage.
marcopolo
I have pissed off the commenting gods (perhaps by putting two links in the comment) and my comment is now in moderation. Will some kind soul with the appropriate authority please pry it out of that dark abyss. Thanks.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: This. The decision to emigrate/become a new citizen in a new country is based on many factors, not all of them economic. If I had married the Canadian in 2007 I would have emigrated since at that time I wasn’t working but had a college degree. Whether I would have been a dual citizen or just full Canuckistani was still up in the air, but the choice to become a citizen of another country can’t be boiled down to stereotypes and pre-conceived notions.
@marcopolo: Eh. It’s just FYWP being FYWP.
Ridnik Chrome
@germy:
And Joy Division. And Hüsker Dü. And Siouxsie and the Banshees. And Blue Oyster Cult. And T. Rex. (Seriously, what kind of Rock Hall of Fame has Billy Joel but not T. Rex?)
trollhattan
@germy:
Heh. Port-a-john in a light-industrial strip parking lot. The back parking lot, by a loading dock.
MJS
@Denali: As of August, 2017, Fox News averaged 2.2 million viewers per night. MSNBC averaged 1.8 million. In a country of over 300 million people. So neither as a percentage of the overall population, nor in comparison with its nearest competitor does Fox News appeal to a large population. More problematic is the ability of Fox News and other right-wing media to drive the narrative for other media outlets. That’s the problem to be addressed, not that a relatively small group of nearly dead viewers gets their news from Fox.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as predicted, Rogin has indeed deleted the tweet
Brachiator
@Denali:
There have always been people who need to have their beliefs, dreams, fantasies and ideologies validated and reinforced. It’s a human thing, but I also believe that this appeals to more conservatives than to other people. These people feel absolutely surrounded and buffeted by secularism, logic, science, humanism and long for the certainty that they get from their religious and political world view.
I honestly don’t know how these people became so militant about it, and so hostile and desperate to not only cling to their beliefs, but to actively fight off anyone or anything that would deny the validity of their stranglehold on nonsense.
Not just Fox. New players like Sinclair Broadcasting are eager to join in. There is a strong market for right wing political propaganda.
MJS
@Brachiator: We’ll soon be seeing a tweet along the lines of, “Ambassador to Panama was doing a very poor job and was about to be fired. Didn’t even get the canal back for us. Also, could only fly helicopters, not F-52s. Sad.”
Yarrow
@Kay (not the front pager):
I love this, Kay. I love the concept of “the far center.” Centrism is its own extreme. I’ll be using this as well. Thanks!
marcopolo
@MJS: Yeah, my general understanding is the overall Fox News demo is actually dying off (they are old) just not fast enough. As MJS points out the real problem is its primary role in the Right Wing Noise Machine and that you will find it playing on the TVs in so many offices in Washington, DC (and I am guessing state capitals across the US).
ruemara
@Schlemazel: Didn’t they do that last year or it’s for this year? Fucking long time coming.
@Doug!: Jamaica.
Before anyone decides they have a cute accent joke, gif, clip or any FUCKING THING ELSE, don’t. You were warned.
Yes, I have to, because everyone thinks they have such wit with stereotypes.
Leto
@Kay: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The time is always right to do what is right.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
glopy b
Just saw this on the local news, Trump will visit the Pittsburgh area next week. He will go to an unnamed local business outside the city to tout his tax cuts and to campaign for Sansonne (?), who’s running against Conor Lamb for the seat vacated by Tim Murphy, who admitted asking his mistress to have an abortion.
The repubs announced a donor will give Sansonne 1 million for his campaign, after an announcement about Lamb’s fundraising. It’s not my district, but I’m donating!
bystander
On MSNBC to avoid saying “sh*thole” they’ve been saying “ess-hole” as if that sounds a lot better.
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat:
I pity the man…
Cacti
@Ridnik Chrome:
Is it a bad time to mention that Bon Jovi is being inducted this year? ;-)
randy khan
@Chip Daniels:
Some people are using the language “issue” as a cover, no doubt, but it’s also clear to me that there are some people who think it’s actually about the language, not about the underlying thinking (if you can use that word when you’re talking about Trump, which is doubtful).
satby
Phillip Mudd said he wishes he had a T-shirt saying he was proud to be a shitholer. So I made one.
FlyingToaster
@Denali:
WRONG, on nearly every possible level.
I’ll specifically refer to this article, in which Ailes stated exactly what Fox News is for.
Believe it or not, the vast majority of us jackals grew up either in the midst of this mindset (waves) or have to deal with family who hold this mindset. We understand EXACTLY how they think, and in general why. Acting as though it’s possible to salvage the old, fundamentally racist and misogynist folks is at best misguided.
This stuff has become tribal. I can tell you which of my cousins in the Midwest and South hold which opinions, by which aunt or uncle they were raised by. The ones who are constantly peppering their e-mails, tweets, and posts with shibboleths (often but not exclusively Xtian religious) are right wingers. It’s not just dog-whistles anymore. They’re out and proud about how much they hate my “uppity” mom, and they loathe me and my sibs.
Fuck off about “understanding” them. I already do.
Immanentize
@Ridnik Chrome: Small personal detail, but TRUE!
The first concert I ever went to was a Three Dog Night concert in my hometown in Upstate New York when I was 13(?). The opening band was T-Rex. When they put on the smoke machine (during Jeepster) and Marc Bolan started whipping his guitar on stage, my life was forever changed….
Denali
@Ruemara,
Yeah, I have a little bit out of the ordinary name. It is amazing how many people think it something to joke about or that no one else has noticed.
Kay
The big, bragging coward ran away. He’s a real tough guy. Yes, sir.
randy khan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Good. Not as good as actually acknowledging it was stupid, but better than leaving it out there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sweet Paulie Blue Eyes making sad face over “unfortunate” remarks.
Contemptible weasel
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I only partly agree with this. The email thing was just the most convenient hook for Hillary hating. If it had not been the email, it would have been something else.
Also, newspapers and magazines just ain’t important anymore. And in the end, practically every major newspaper in the country endorsed Clinton. Some editorials even said, “For God’s sake, don’t vote for Trump!” And they were attacked and rejected by Trump supporters. Nobody under age 30 gives the slightest shit about what is in the NY Times, unless maybe it’s about a Kardashian. And a lot of the remaining people who might care are swayed by Trump’s dumbass wailing about fake news.
But I don’t think that any of this is as important right now, as the threat posed by Trump’s open racism.
Immanentize
@ruemara: My prior Dean was Jamaican, then Canadian then a US citizen. She was awesome! I miss her so. She is in D.C. now.
BruceFromOhio
That horse puckey comment is unfortunate, as Rogin has done some fine reporting on Chinese influence on US and Australian pols,
Glad you raised the cash, I regret all my spare change has been going to Sen. Brown’s (D-OH) re-election. Baby!!
@randy khan: ETA – this. Reason number 6 jillion why I despise twattering, it’s far too easy to shoot from the hip and have it out there for the world to see, then later the twit says, well, now that I think about it further, that was a stupid thing to say.
Dr. Fungus
@Schlemazel: Yep.
schrodingers_cat
@Yutsano: Immigrating to the United States is/was not easy (even before Tanton acolytes took office), ask any immigrant. Many decide that its not worth the heart burn and go back. So when know-nothings say why don’t the Dreamers just become citizens, they demonstrate their profound ignorance. For the Dreamers, there is simply no path, in the current system.
Denali
@Flying Toaster,
Just for the record, I am way over 55, as is my husband, and I have never ever willingly watched Fox News.
Brachiator
@bystander:
What a bunch of fools.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: Caribbean countries remind of cricket and the West Indies cricket team.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Denali: Agreed. Fox News and the rest of the right-wing propaganda machine are the biggest threat to America as we know it, and we have to find a way to stop them. The problem is that their propaganda feeds into some very primitive emotions – fear, nostalgia, resentment at unfulfilled hopes, discomfort with change, and tribalism in general.
I used to read about Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow South and think that we were so beyond that sort of thing, but now I realize that human nature hasn’t changed and we’re still at great risk of backsliding. It’s depressing.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: The coverage was not symmetric, HRC got much harsher coverage in the elite media. Compared to her Doll Hands was handled with kid gloves.
Ridnik Chrome
@Immanentize: That must have been an awesome show. I was a little too young to have seen TR live, but I remember hearing “Get It On (Bang A Gong)” on the local top forty stations back in 1972-73. I had no idea back then what Bolan was singing, but it sounded dirty as all hell…
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: My least favorite: people asking why the Dreamers don’t become citizens as justification for laws preventing them from becoming citizens.
JPL
@Brachiator: I hear asshole, and I’m not sure that’s better.
raven
@Ridnik Chrome: Funny, I’m too OLD to have every seen them!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@ruemara: Not even that Superbowl ad for whatever-it-was, with the white guys getting Jamaican accents from using whatever product X was?
I *hated* that ad, though as I recall it was reported that Jamaicans thought it was cute. So what did you, hereby nominated as Speaker For All Caribbeans, think of it?
This cross-cultural stuff can be tricky. When SNL did that hilarious skit about spoiled tech reviewers whining about trivial stuff on their new iPhones, and then having to face down a panel of Chinese factory workers… I remember reading that Chinese found it insulting. OK, the actors were not Chinese, the accents were probably not very good, but the whole point in that skit was that the ones being insulted were the Americans.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
Senator Harris is Jamaican-Indian, and just got on the Judiciary committee to become a double-shithole threat to the president and his administration. Let’s order up some popcorn, vindaloo and Red Stripe, shall we?
raven
@Immanentize: Now TDN is a band that I really hate. Jeremiah was a Bullfrog, seriously important music there.
Cacti
@schrodingers_cat:
Maybe the only good thing ever produced by Reason magazine was their flowchart on how “easy” it is to immigrate legally to the United States.
raven
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The one with the dude with the dreads putting his cocker spaniel on his head was awesome!
? Martin
I think that’s a misread. Buzzfeed experimented on how to make money when it was clear that banner ad revenue was going to drive to zero and put everyone out of business, and then used the native ad model that they mastered through listicles to build a content generating business. Short of WaPos model (being subsidized by Amazon), Buzzfeed has built the most durable news business out there right now and it shows.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Speaking of the Women’s March and Fox News (both mentioned above), are people being encouraged to wear / knit the pink hats or not this year?
I googled “pussy hat” this morning to show my wife an example of the hat in question. Along with the images the Google search turned up a bunch of articles about how “feminists” were discouraging the hats, about how they wouldn’t be appearing this year, because they were racist/anti-transgender/different reason in every headline. But every single one of those articles was from a conservative propaganda outlet.
I haven’t heard any discussion on this topic in our universe. Has there been any? Are the hats making a reappearance (I hope) or are they for some reason considered declassé?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Help I’ve been moderated! I mentioned the P-word used to describe pink Women’s March hats.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: There is so much lies and ignorance about this issue floating around. WH is supplying a lot of the shit.
BruceFromOhio
@glopy b: Thanks for pointing this out! There’s some interesting background to the District, and context for the special election as a bellwether.
trollhattan
@Immanentize: @Ridnik Chrome:
Lord only knows what Bolan would have accomplished had he lived longer (talk about a story that keeps repeating itself). I have a couple T.Rex compilations, including BBC live performances, that spotlight his playing in ways the hits never did. He was both technically very competent and unique in the same sense as, say, Tom Verlaine.
Immanentize
@raven: And I guess I was just right…. It was the summer of ’72
scav
Let it not be said that the Orange Fart can’t multitask. Vauxhall is chiming in about being off (although apparently not a shithole).
eclare
g@Cacti: Seriously? Gaaah!!!! I was a freshman in college when Livin’ On a Prayer came out, and everyone else in my dorm went mad for it. I wanted to pick up every single stereo and throw them all out the window.
Immanentize
@raven: I could not agree more. But I did get to hear that particular wanker song at EVERY DAMN CZECH/POLISH WEDDING I went to in my youth (which numbered dozens!) because it was the only “Rock” song polka bands ever learned. It still haunts me.
eclare
@satby: Awesome!
trollhattan
@raven:
They inexplicably clogged up the radio for several years. Their one good song–One is the Loneliest Number–is good because it’s by Harry Nilsson. Aimee Mann does a better version, also, too.
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: The funny thing is how roti & curries are part of the culture due to East Indian influence on the island. Thanks, btw. I don’t make roti, but I do make a decent curry.
@trollhattan: It would be a curry, some roti, a red strip or some malta.
@Denali: Bane of my existence. It was annoying as a kid, turned intolerable as an adult.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: Granted it’s mostly a ceremonial post, but the former Governour-General of Canada was of Haitian descent.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
The stuff of nightmares. :-)
Use an accordion, go to jail. (Bumper sticker I once saw)
Brachiator
@JPL:
Hmm. Not using the actual word just adds pointless ambiguity. Trump said what he said. Make him own it.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: I can make decent roti, my version (from western India) is paper thin and called chapati. So I will make the roti you make the curry.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Cotton and Perdue say they ‘don’t recall’ hearing shithole. Wagons being circled around the racist
Immanentize
@trollhattan: One of my guitar playing friends used to say that “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by TDN (and also “Horse with No Name” by America) were songs written by guys who never had a drink imagining tripping.
eclare
@Denali: My first name was in a fairly popular song title that came out while I was in high school. EVERY SINGLE PERSON I met made a joke about it, thinking they were the first to think of it. I hate that fucking song.
ETA>Some 30 years later, some idiots still make jokes.
Immanentize
@trollhattan:
Is the Pope Catholic?
Does a bear shite in the woods?
Does an accordion player have a pinky ring?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@trollhattan: My wife and I were eating in a restaurant one evening with music playing in the background and suddenly we stopped and looked at each other. “Was that a bagpipe?” we asked each other, and agreed that there was indeed a bagpipe playing on the refrains.
Later I went online to try to track down That Song With The Bagpipe. Turns out it’s been used a lot. So often, that somebody was able to put together a Top 10 Songs with Bagpipes list.
The one we heard isn’t on the list, so I’ll never know what it was. Other than the bagpipe it was pretty forgettable.
Edit: There must be some musical analogue to Internet Rule 34. No matter what joke you might try to make about the most ludicrous possible use of music, somebody’s done it. Tubas playing “Flight of the Bumblebee”? Oh yes, probably.
Concerto for orchestra and mouth harp? You betcha
schrodingers_cat
@Cacti: Even their “easy” paths are not so easy. Easier paths (GC through marriage and extraordinary ability GC)in the Reason illustration have been labeled easy because they have relatively shorter wait times but because the wait time is short the burden of proof on the applicant is high. It can take months just to collect the evidence to start the application, then find a good lawyer to make that case etc.
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The thing is, “shithole” is completely believable to both supporters and opponents.
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: done and yes, we do the thin one, at least the ones I know who make roti do. I’ve never had it outside of an Indian restaurant. Balloon-Juice meet up and home cooking festival at John’s house!
Yutsano
@ruemara:
Why am I being tortured with delicious foods right before lunch? :P
Also: there better be naan.
@ruemara:
I’M IN!!!
Gin & Tonic
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Isn’t playing the bagpipes a criminal offense in most civilized countries?
ArchTeryx
@ruemara: Could I ask which one? I make a point of introducing myself to immigrants and learning something about their original countries. I quite enjoy learning such things.
Mnemosyne
@eclare:
My 17-year-old niece’s name is Alexa.
Yeah. It sucks to be her right now.
Lapassionara
@Mike J: I agree. I grew up in Memphis, and I lived through the sounds made there. Still love listening to Little Richard.
At least Memphis has the Rock and Soul Museum (or whatever it is called).
schrodingers_cat
@Yutsano: Naan is originally from Afghanistan and more of a restaurant food. Have you ever had rumali (handkerchief) roti. Its huge and tossed in the air like pizza, its pretty awesome.
FlyingToaster
@Denali: As am I.
I grew up in the heart of the Bible Belt, raised by parents who were [D] political activists in their spare time. My family was the one who had black and hispanic classmates being welcome at our house.
So I’ve been dealing with the FoxNoise mindset since 1961. It was founded, as Ailes said, to cater to the people who already feel that way, not to convert people to that point of view.
But Missouri is being run, in part, by people I went to HS with. And they thought that way in 1979. They were using that language back in 1979. They hated smart people, nerds, and Democrats back in 1979. It’s just that there was no national media outlet echoing those sentiments back then.
I left home at 18 to escape all the bullshit (as I said to my dad at the time, “the honors program at IU gets me the fuck out of Kansas City”); and came on to the East Coast after grad school for work. I still go back to visit family.
There is no lack of understanding. As efg says, “fuckem”.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: OT How is your wife? Did the horror ER trip conclude well?
Cheryl Rofer
Journos on my Twitter TL are complaining about a White House conference call on Iran. Apparently the White House didn’t mute callers, and the line was all telephones ringing, crosstalk, and profanity. Now they’re not allowing questions. The usual clusterf**k.
no comment
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I’ve still been knitting them. I used the “contact us” form at the Pu$$yHat Project to ask where to send them. They’re collecting them for the L.A. march and any other local marches. They have a list of collection sites at the website.
Cheryl Rofer
raven
@Immanentize: Ha!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve had homemade puri. Half the experience is watching it puff up in the oil. Somehow ordering it in the restaurant is not the same experience.
eclare
@Mnemosyne: You can tell her right now, it will never go away.
Davebo
@SiubhanDuinne: Great tweet the other day about The Post.
“Watching a movie about a newspaper. In a movie theater. In a mall. It’s like a dying industry Turducken.”
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: I had chapatti at (of all places) an Indian buffet when I was in Anaheim. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a place like that. I was not disappoint.
Ruckus
@Kay:
A lot of the people who work for the president don’t do it for just one president of course. The career diplomat who just resigned for example. Yes his oath is to work for the president but it’s really the office of the president. I’d bet he’d never have imagined that we’d elect someone as fucked up as drumpf, someone far worse than just useless, someone so deranged and dangerous because he is vastly incapable of even imagining what the job is like because it can’t be difficult because the black man did it. And as he is that incapable he can’t do the job. At all.
I am in no way presidential material and I would have made a better president when I was in 4th grade than the shithole in chief. And I could say that about probably 50% of my classmates as well.
raven
schrodingers_cat
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Actually, poori is the easiest Indian bread you can make. You should try making it. Its pretty fun, but loaded with calories.
Poori goes best with aamras (juice of mango ) or shreekhand (sweetened yogurt of Greek yogurt consistency)
Mnemosyne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I think many people are planning to re-use their hats from last year, so there’s not as much call for new ones.
I remember hearing some rumblings along those lines last year, and I still don’t get why some people thought that only ciswomen were allowed to wear them. I saw plenty of men wearing them, which makes me assume that at least some transwomen were wearing them, too.
Anyone who thought you needed to have a natural-born vajayjay to wear one seriously missed the point.
Davebo
@eclare: Your number isn’t 867-5309 is it?
;0)
schrodingers_cat
@Yutsano: The best Indian food I have had in this country in a restaurant was in the Bay Area.
catclub
@WaterGirl:
I am waiting for a “Shitheel names shitholes” headline.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: Had no idea that naan was from Afghanistan! I’ll have to look for what you mention the next time I get Indian food, but I’m betting it will not be easy to find.
Leto
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Racists circling there racist.
Lyrebird
@randy khan:
QFT.
Still forming my opinion of Sen. Gillibrand, but I definitely agree with the above.
In a way, I appreciate the blithering denials because those folks are showing their true colors, and some highly surprising folks are coming out swinging against them! Phil Mudd, never saw that coming – wow!
I still don’t know what to say when I see or hear remarks like, “but The Root is racist! all those slams of wypipo and Beckys and so forth”… I want to say, uh yeah but they are not coming to my yard and burning something or poisoning my dog (see Arkansas, like this very year) because I have three best friends named Becky and at least that many favorite brands of mayo.
But I’ll take the Randy Khan approach. (are you related to Khizr? Don’t answer that, but he rocks) Not worth my time.
trollhattan
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Couple years ago spouse and I at dinner at a Mexican restaurant Friday night. Place was jammed and we got a table at the edge of the main dining room. While waiting I joked “Hey look, the poster says Fridays are mariachi nights” given we both have a love-hate for the genre. Well, after dinner arrived I happened to turn around and see a ginormous mariachi band lining the aisle behind us. Sure enough they fire up, multiple trumpets, the giant bass guitar and yes, an accordion, and at a half-deafening volume. We laugh at our predicament and I bite into a roasted jalapeno that proved way, way hotter than I could tolerate. Finished my beer, finished the ice water and sat there with streaming eyes and running nose, waiting in vain for our waiter, who had no access to us, because mariachi. The longest waiter wait known to man.
Once they wandered to a more distant location they were pretty decent.
Spanky
@Gin & Tonic: Don’t forget the ancient definition of “perfect pitch”.
It’s when you pitch an accordion into a dumpster and it lands on a set of bagpipes.
schrodingers_cat
@eclare: Lavash bread made in a hot wood fired oven from Turkey is somewhat similar, and may be easier to find.
eclare
@Davebo: Ha! Didn’t see that, love it!
1000 flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Kay: If that’s about Ambassador Feeley’s resignation, the ambassadors to smaller countries like Panama are career Foreign Service officers, and thus a part of the federal civil service. It is explicitly their job to stick around and see that the nation’s business is carried out, no matter who is in charge, no matter how they may feel about who’s running the show, and whether that civil servant is a clerk at your local Social Security office, a GSO accountant, or a ranking FSO.
For a career man like Feeley to walk says some horrible things about what it’s like at the State Department these days.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: She was admitted, and will probably be there until Sunday. It was a long day yesterday, but she’s doing a little better today.
Dman
@Aleta:
Maybe Mattis et al could take a lesson from this brave person.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
You call it elite media. I call it old, irrelevant media. But I take your point.
I don’t entirely agree, but I don’t think it mattered as much as a lot of people do. It’s not that I think that the media was always fair to Clinton. But a chunk of voters brought their own hate and fear and sexism and were not willing to give her a fair hearing. Didn’t matter what you put in the newspapers that fewer and fewer people read or care about.
And people underestimate how Trump defanged and owned the media. And here you can also note how weakly the media fight back. He branded them as fake news, just as he branded Jeb Bush “low energy”, leading Bush to whine about how Trump had created an alternative universe (Real Clear Politics July 12, 2016) and leading other outlets to waste time listing all the “insults Donald Trump has hurled at Jeb Bush” (CBS news August 6, 2016).
And again, this matters now because it hints at how Trump will dance around and run from his racism, aided and abetted by the media. The media is afraid of Bush, and also afraid of the backlash they get when they go after him honestly.
ETA: The stories I note popped up when I did a google search for “trump brands jeb bush”
Also, I am with you 100% with respect to the NYT letting people like Haberman or Maureen Dowd function as in-house Trump apologists and propagandists.
eclare
@Davebo: Nope, but good guess!
mapaghimagsik
@schrodingers_cat:
which one?
Ian G.
Still thinking about Emmanuel Mensah who Bill Kristol tweeted about. The guy from a “shithole” country did more in service to his adopted country in 5 minutes than Trump or any of his loathsome children have done in their entire lives combined.
Ridnik Chrome
@schrodingers_cat: If you like Indian food, come to Queens some time.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
I love mariachi bands, but it’s gotta be an actual band. None of this “we have a couple of guys with a guitar and a trombone.”
How about some Star Wars music done mariachi-style?
1000 flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@ruemara: And lovely.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Hoping for the best — sending thoughts of healing in your direction…
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Perdue also has that statement on his homepage, and the coward doesn’t list a local phone number. Senator Isakson said that if Trump said it, he needs to apologize to Haitians and all of mankind. He also said if he didn’t say, it needs to prove it. I called his office and thanked him, because we know the president can’t prove it. Even Perdue didn’t say definitely he didn’t say it.
schrodingers_cat
@mapaghimagsik: I don’t remember the names, one was a nondescript place in a strip mall run by a mother-in-law, daughter-in-law combo in Fremont. It was homey vegetarian Punjabi food that you would get at someone’s home.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Could be worse. Her middle name could be Siri.
Gin & Tonic
@Spanky: My daughter is a music teacher, and took home an unused accordion from school last year. She wanted to teach herself how to play it. Her husband, also a musician, was not supportive of this plan.
So In Austria this year, we bought a child-sized accordion for her daughter, for a Christmas present. What are grandparents for, right?
Ruviana
@Immanentize: And yet “Mama Told Me Not to Come” was written by Randy Newman. His version is more, shall we say, dry and ironic.
Ridnik Chrome
@Spanky: Also, Gary Larson’s all-time classic: “Welcome to Heaven, here’s your harp. Welcome to Hell, here’s your accordion.”
eclare
@Gin & Tonic: Glad she’s a little better. It’s tough when someone is in the hospital, but you don’t want to take chances with pneumonia.
schrodingers_cat
@Ridnik Chrome: Jackson Heights? I have been there.
Best Indian food is to be had in Amchi Mumbai, of course.
ETA: In the United States, we get food mostly from the north or the south, other cuisines are unfortunately absent.
Immanentize
@Ruviana: It’s the creepy TDN “narrative” talking aspect that makes it bad to me. And I love Randy Newman….
Brachiator
It was bugging me that I couldn’t place the song lyric.
or even better, the misheard lyrics
Ruviana
@Immanentize: Fair enough. Love Randy Newman too.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
There has always been a strong market for right wing news. I think it’s because so many right wingers are fully convinced that what is wrong with the world is that large swaths of the population don’t look like them. IOW they are racists. The grew up in a segregated society, their parents and their parents did as well. They have heard for all of their lives that the problems of the country are that it is not as segregated as they believe it should be. They live in their own little worlds, they don’t want to live in the bigger world, they want it all to make sense and of course it doesn’t. They don’t want to just get along, they want to dominate. They like people like the Mercers and Vlad because the rich are trying to make the world in their image with everyone else slaves. They don’t understand that they are the slaves in this story because the story really is nonsensical, in every sense of the word. Us trying to make sense of it doesn’t work because sense cannot be made of it. It’s a mobius loop, want more slaves and think that you won’t become one because, something, something. The rich have always been trying to become richer, that’s their nature, we’ve just gotten to the point in most societies that they are succeeding better at it currently. And that feeds the mobius loop of racism.
CarolPW
@Mnemosyne: My sister made one for her dog (male) and he wore it on their march in Sacramento. If I were a faster knitter I would have made one for my dog too but barely got mine done.
Ridnik Chrome
@schrodingers_cat: Jackson Heights, to be sure. But my own personal favorite Indian restaurant in Queens is in Astoria.
schrodingers_cat
@Ridnik Chrome: Which one? Its been a while since I have been in NYC.
donnah
Ouch, y’all! We couldn’t afford a piano when I was a kid, so my parents got me a used accordion. It mostly served the purpose of helping me learn to read music and play chords and melodies. I was ten years old then and tried playing Jesus Christ Superstar by sounding it out, so my dad took pity on me and bought the sheet music.
I was never good playing it, but it was fun. And if we’re being honest, it was in the attic of our first house and when we moved, I left it there.
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne:
It was really a dubious decision to use an actual name for the default. They should have used something that sounds like a name but isn’t or at least is really rare, like maybe “Connexa”.
Siri is extremely rare and would be OK – except it has a hominem. The problem with being named Alexa Seary
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m not sure if you were around for the Great Pizza Argument a few weeks ago, but pizza originated in a single city in Italy (Naples), was brought to the US by immigrants from that city, and was adopted as a “traditional Italian” food here. The rest of Italy was very puzzled when Americans started showing up after WWII demanding pizza.
Yutsano
@Fair Economist: Apparently you can rename them. A friend called his Cortana. Which is funny in a creepy sort of way.
Mike J
@raven: That was not Hoyt Axton’s finest.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
IF we were ever forced to get something like that — and we currently both find it creepy as hell — we would immediately change its name to “Computer.” If it’s good enough for “Star Trek,” it’s good enough for us.
Cacti
@FlyingToaster:
Speaking of the Show Me State, did you hear that it the made Fodors Travel Guide “10 places in the world not to visit in 2018”?
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I think it was Anthony Bourdain who said that Italian food he grew up eating around New Jersey was quite a bit different than Italian food in Italy. The immigrants used more cheese and more sauce, than in Italy itself.
piratedan
@Mike J: perhaps not, but its not as if Cleveland doesn’t have a rich history with Rock bands… The Outsiders, The Choir, Raspberries, The James Gang come to mind as artists that tout Cleveland as their starting place…
raven
@Mnemosyne: How about a Japanese High School Band dong it right ar round the corner from you!
Mike J
@Mnemosyne: Computer is one of the few things you can change it to, along with Echo and Amazon. Still cant make a decent cuppa.
Chyron HR
@Lyrebird:
“I don’t think they should be President, either.”
Haydnseek
@germy: …….and Rory Gallagher, while they’re at it.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Mnemosyne: Intentionally missing the point is kinda a staple of concern trolling.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
What most people think of as “Italian” food (pasta and red sauce) is actually Sicilian. The rest of Italy has more rice and less pasta.
Sicilian is actually a separate dialect from standard Italian, which is why there are sometimes slightly different names for the same food (i.e. Penne and Mostaccioli are the same noodle but with different names).
Fair Economist
@Yutsano: Yeah, but that doesn’t help when you go to a friend’s house because they won’t have renamed theirs. Although they might have to with some conversations.
Mnemosyne
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Very true.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
Indians are the only people in the world who know every immigration law backwards and forwards. Hah. :-) Yes, if I was anyone but an Indian, that would be pretty racist comment to make, but that comments come from being around indians who have no white people around them and listen to what they say without their filter.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I’m planing to go to the LA march and thought about wearing one. I tried to go last year and ended up standing on the Gold line platform for over an hr before giving up. Didn’t wear one then but it seems like there should be some form of instant recognition of what the hat means, what the march means. I saw a small girl, maybe 4 or 5 wearing one the other day in the store, her mom was taking pictures of her. It seems like not such a big thing but it is.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Indians would win gold medals, if hypocrisy was a sport at the Olympics.
Suffragette City
FTFNYT and please front pagers warn us when it’s a link to them.
I would love to see Elizabeth II reaction to Trump not going there and I really think he may be afraid of her and or Prince Phillip.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: But even I had no idea about this TPS business until last year.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: Sweep the medal stand?
geg6
@FlyingToaster:
Totally agree.
I live completely surrounded by Dolt 45 worshippers. I keep hearing people say we have to find a way to appeal to them. That they are motivated by their economic anxieties. That they are brainwashed. That they, apparently, have no agency and are being led by the nose by all these bad actors, whether politicians or right wing media or bad religion.
Fuck that. I’ve known these people the entirety of my 59 years on earth. I know that all these other factors are peripheral. Yes, they watch FOXNews and listen to Rush. Yes, they are always bitching about the economy (even as most of them are some of the most financially well-set up people I know, especially the old retired assholes) . But the main motivation for them is anger and hate. Anger that they are no longer as powerful or hip as they were a generation ago. Hate for everyone who isn’t exactly like them. They are hateful bigots. Full stop. There is no magic that will make them NOT be that way. I don’t deal with them any more than I have to for work. In my private life, I have cut every single one of them out of my life. This means I don’t speak to my neighbors and most of the people who live in my hometown. I don’t care. I despise them and will never forgive them. I wish them nothing but pain and suffering for the rest of their lives. And I will never go back to the polite relationships I once had with them. They threw that away.
Fair Economist
@Mnemosyne: The rest of Italy still has a lot of red sauce and pasta. Pasta Bolognese is one of the iconic dishes there (in Bologna), and it’s a long way from Sicily. Of course no real cuisine is limited to a half-dozen dishes like standard American “Italian”.
Amir Khalid
@eclare:
As a junior reporter some 30 years agi, I covered the trial of two famous (in Malaysia) rock stars for a minor pot possession charge. It so happened that their band, Search, had just had a hit titled Rosanna. It so happened that the magistrate presiding over the trial was also named Rosanna. And it so happened that one day the news editor on duty decided to add both these facts to the intro I had written for an otherwise routine story, noteworthy only because celebrities were involved.
At the next day’s hearing, I was the one who got the dirty look from the magistrate. Can’t say that I blame her.
Jay S
@The Ancient Randonneur:
I can see the petition drive to the FCC to shut them down.
geg6
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Myself and all the people going to the one here in Pittsburgh are all planning on wearing our pussy hats.
Leto
@Mnemosyne: THE GREAT PIZZA ARGUMENT! :)
@Mnemosyne: When the wife and I arrived back in the states last June, we went to a local “authentic” Italian place. Highly rated, good reviews.. was basically served Chef Boyardee. Indeed, tons of red sauce and lots of cheese.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
Yeah, I’m overstating it by quite a bit. The point is more that pasta with red sauce is no more “real Italian” than, say, chicken piccata. There’s a lot of regional variety.
Ridnik Chrome
@schrodingers_cat: Seva, 34th Street and 30th Avenue. About a five minute walk from the N train.
cain
@Brachiator:
Of course there is. It’s alwyas been the case. But nuclear war isn’t very profitable. But who cares right? Short term profits and all.. not like post holocaust is going to help them enjoy that money. Jeezus we are a wretched group of organisms. :D
schrodingers_cat
@Ridnik Chrome: Thanks much!
cain
@Yarrow:
The problem with this is that the center is now right. People like chuck todd will keep moving to the right and calling it center. What was normal left is now crazy left. It’s silly.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: Awkward!
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
My mom wanted me to be musical. Silly mom. She sent me to trumpet lessons. That worked not at all well. She sent me to accordion lessons. A much bigger disaster. She finally understood that if you gathered all of my musical talents in one place, you’d need an electron microscope to see them. And you’d have to do a grid search at that.
Suffragette City
April Ryan is a heroine..Bless her for being the one to make sure her voice was heard today asking the pos if he is a racist as he was shaking hands.
Mnemosyne
@cain:
It’s like not a single one of them bothered to read “The Masque of the Red Death” in high school. There is NO level of wealth that can protect you from a nuclear bomb, or an epidemic.
Ksmiami
@FlyingToaster: fuck understanding them they need a fucking beat down.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
I finally got my wet grinder which means that I can finally make idlis, dosa and adai :)
FlyingToaster
@Cacti: I showed HerrDoktor the article last night. He’s trying to persuade me not to take WarriorGirl out to her cousins’ in April. I told him that he couldn’t come, but that she was in no danger where we’ll be.
I hope.
Matt McIrvin
@Yutsano: I find it kind of amazing that Microsoft actually named their own digital assistant Cortana, given Cortana’s storyline in the Halo games. It’d be a little like making one named GLaDOS. I guess there have been various software projects named HAL over the years.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
My current passion is theplas.. OMG, so good… I can make it every day.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Did you get it from India? That thing weighs a ton.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: But do you have access to fresh methi (fenugreek)
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
Indeed. It’s why I don’t hang with Indian society. I remember one time I got accosted for not being part of the Tamil society while eating at her retaurant. I’m thinking “nobody tells me who I should be hanging out with, lady” Sadly, my ex-wife and my brother’s wife also have learned this since they are/were marreid to indians who grew up here and had to deal with a number of bullshit too.
patrick II
I guess Obama’s horseshit quote is important to Rogin just because Obama said horseshit too and just like Donny! And like a Little boy tattletale he runs to his mommy and says “Oh my, Obama said horseshit!” childishly taken out context. But, calling a particular political criticism of a policy horseshit is, for adults at least, considerably different than calling an entire country and its people horseshit. Context matters to adults.
cain
@Mnemosyne:
No kidding. Radiation doesnt give a shit who you are. Of course, knowing these assholes they’ll blame someone else but not question their roles at all.
One thing I learned about reading stuff like Aesop’s fables or some of these others is that in these stories the characters possessed a wisdom that people don’t actually have. So the point of the story would be completely lost on a number of people. We have lost wisdom in our society.
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah, I did.. and dragged it from India -> Indiana -> Denver. It wasn’t that bad.. but yeah. But soooo worth it!
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
I do. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a car. I’ll have to rectify that soon.
Gelfling 545
@randy khan: Many thought or pretended to that the issue with the Billy Bush tape was that Trump used a naughty word.
David Evans
@Mnemosyne: With any real word, you find it talking back to the TV news a lot. It’s amazing how often “Echo” is spoken. Usually the response is simply “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that”, but I have known it to start playing a music channel. Which is why mine isn’t hooked up to anything important.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
The human ability to lie to one’s self is boundless and thorough. People do it nearly every moment of their lives, in big ways and small.
zhena gogolia
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Good for Leonhardt. He’s one of the reasons I keep my subscription.
zhena gogolia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Students at my PCU were offended by the hats as being anti-transgender.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
They may not have gone on a deliberate mission to get Trump in, but they most certainly did treat the whole thing like a game, and one where they got to move the pieces around wherever they wanted to. It was tons of fun, and they didn’t care whose eye got put out.
AnotherBruce
@Ridnik Chrome: Yeah, T Rex got the short shrift in this country.
Jay S
@David Evans: I wish Google home/mini/assistant had customization, but at least the false triggers tend to be one stepping on the other.
Just One More Canuck
@Cacti: On the other hand, so is Dire Straits and Nina Simone (Sister Rosetta Tharpe got in as an ‘early influence’)
glopy b
@BruceFromOhio: Yes, i don’t like the Pelosi bashing ( the woman would be supernatural to have her hand in everything the repubs say she does), but he’s from a solid Dem background and unlike others I won’t mention, I can support a Dem who doesn’t check every one of my boxes.
We just had a defeat in challenging the map here, so that makes this more important.
different-church-lady
@MattF:
I think you’re missing something significant: racist stop being taboo the moment Trump took the nomination. It’s so not-taboo anymore that people have stopped trying to hide it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as I saw it, there was a response, but the person responding hasn’t (as I’ve seen) been identified.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
It’s possible we’re approaching an operational state that is an object lesson in the difference between “de facto” and “de jure”
AnotherBruce
@trollhattan: You hit on two of my favorite underrated musicians, T Rex and Tom Verlaine. I purchased Marquee Moon in 1977 to get an idea on what punk was. And that album blew me away with some of the best all around guitar playing that I have ever heard. I still play it frequently.
satby
@zhena gogolia: weird, in South Bend several out transgender folks were wearing them, as were quite a few men.
PST
@trollhattan:
I can’t disagree. They were the first band I can recall seeing in concert, though, which I think one or two others mentioned. There was something a little bubble-gummy about them, I guess, that packed in the youngsters. I remember liking Mama Told Me Not to Come, not having ever heard of Randy Newman then..
different-church-lady
@BruceFromOhio: I have been saying this for years: Twitter is the most efficient method mankind has yet devised to turn smart people into morons.
Gelfling 545
@Spanky: But French cafe music, zydeco, that sad accordeon behind some of Edith Piaf’s haunting songs….
Though often misused, the accordion can add a certain je ne sais quoi.
Gelfling 545
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I just figured that they’re so used to hearing such talk among their peers that they don’t notice it anymore.
mapaghimagsik
@Mnemosyne: I’d rather cut right to the chase and name mine ‘Colossus’, or ‘Skynet’
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t understand. Did they explain?
JAFD
One thing our President has done for his (and, yeah, my) alma mater:
You may remember that in ’75, WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania station, got into trouble with the FCC for broadcasting ‘obscene’ material, almost losing its license.
During the past week Mr. Trump has taken the concept of ‘censorship of “bad language”‘ and poisoned it, strangled it, shot it, and stuffed it under the ice on the Schuylkill River.
Gelfling 545
@Leto: Most pf the Italian places here are still pretty much owned by people whose Italian immigrant ancestors started them – unless you go to a chain like Olive Garden and why would you? Here in Buffalo there’s a good variety of traditional ethnic cooking available.
NR
People from “shithole” countries shouldn’t take it personally considering Trump has spent the better part of the last decade calling America a shithole country.
zhena gogolia
@mapaghimagsik:
I think the problem is that people think the hats are supposed to be depictions of the vagina. I think this is an erroneous belief, but it pushes the button of “not all women have vaginas.” Same reason they had to cancel The Vagina Monologues at some school, can’t remember where.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Immanentize: “Mama Told Me Not To Come” was written by Randy Newman; yeah, the “Short People”, “I Love LA” guy.
Kayla Rudbek
@marcopolo: heck, Fox now plays on one of the TV screens behind the checkout lines at my office cafeteria! Part of me thinks, “well, at least I know what the enemy is saying,” but part of me wants to complain that we shouldn’t be subjected to foreign propaganda in a federal government office building
elm
I called the offices of my Senators and Representative today (all Republicans) to whether they support or oppose Trump’s policy on immigration from “shithole countries”.
One wanted to write my comment down as “s-hole”, I politely directed him to spell it out. Another asked me to stop saying “shithole”, I asked why it’s OK for the President to say it but not me.
zhena gogolia
@elm:
Good for you!
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
So they’re morons. Good to know.
randy khan
@Lyrebird:
If I were, you can be sure I’d be telling people!
In any event “randy khan” is a nom de Internet, and bears no resemblance to my actual name or ethnicity. I’ve been using it for a long time, at least since I first started commenting at Slate around 2000. (I took a break from Slate once and came back to find a thread speculating that I was the same person as a guy who had scammed Slate by writing an article that had no basis in fact. Part of the theory had to do with when I had disappeared. It was kind of funny.) There are about a dozen people who might guess who I am because I occasionally used it as a pen name when I already had too many articles in an issue of our college newspaper under my real name.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
And then all the whiners start bringing up George Duke, Link Wray, Husker Du, Rosetta Tharp, and so on and so forth.
Amateurs.
The R&R HoF will be a joke until Starland Vocal Band is inducted. On THAT day, it will become worthy of its name.
Scamp Dog
@Davebo: One of my favorite bits of rock-n-roll trivia is that 867-5309 is a prime number. It turns out that about 3% of 7-digit numbers are prime, so it’s not as rare as you might think, but it’s still a fun coincidence (I have a tough time thinking of Tommy and the Tu-tones looking for a prime number to put in their song).
SiubhanDuinne
@Denali:
I am 75, and I have also never watched Fox voluntarily. Even my late extra-husband, who was orders of magnitude more conservative, I think would have changed channels in disgust.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
GODDAMNYOU, Spellcheck. FFS. You know perfectly well what I typed. And even if you didn’t, you fucking should have figured it out, you’re so bloody goddamn fucking smart.
#iamnotabigamist
Haroldo
@SFAW: This comment is truly a delight.
mapaghimagsik
@zhena gogolia:
Thanks. I confess my first reaction to this is “What -the-ever-actual-pumpkin-fuck?”
Clearly, I’m missing a larger point and need to process this some.
SFAW
@Haroldo:
Fortunately, it was still afternoon when I wrote it.
hugely
@Kay: nope, thats the tragedy. Its an every day struggle to nuture the better angels of our nature