Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Infrastructure week. at last.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Consistently wrong since 2002

You cannot shame the shameless.

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

Hot air and ill-informed banter

This really is a full service blog.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Let’s finish the job.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

You are here: Home / Same Old Shit

Reader Interactions

119Comments

  1. 1.

    MazeDancer

    We have addresses to write PostCards for Heidi Heitkamp.

    Got them seconds ago.

    We have thousands of addresses.

    Flipping the Senate depends on electing Heidi.

    C’mon Balloon Juice, you can step up and do 20 or 30 each, I know you can.

    (And thank you Ceci7 for the contact info)

    (And if John Cole gonna bigfoot, to save the Senate, Imma gonna repeat)

    PostCardPatriots.com

  5. 5.

    rikyrah

    Evening Cole.?
    They haven’t learned shyt from 2016, cause they don’t want to learn anything. They could shut down these bot accounts..
    If they wanted to

  6. 6.

    guachi

    Did you guys catch the racists tweet from Rep. Jason Chaffetz?

    Reposting this election update from a few threads below. Maybe y’all can feel better about stupid stuff.

    Nate Silver and the 538 crew must be seeing some kind of movement towards Ds in either polls or enthusiasm or something. His ratings in the past week have take a strong turn towards Team D. Stronger than the movement on Cook Report. Both were similar base on a D wave of about 230 seats but today’s 538 has Ds up to 234.

    That’s a lot of seats since I looked just six days ago!

    The odds of Ds winning the House based on 538’s current numbers is 99.999%. Ran 100,000 random trials and the Democrats won the house in 99,999 of them. The odds aren’t that high on the 538 site because they add lots of leeway for other events.

    But 99.999% and 234 seats seems pretty good, no?

  8. 8.

    jacy

    @guachi:

    Silver had a post about the move being due to fundraising on the Dem side. It’s one of the fundamentals that goes into the model and it’s been crazy good for Dems. Theoretically, it picks up actual voter enthusiasm that polls may not, because it’s factual. You can see people giving money, but you don’t know if polling is picking up true voters.

    If you look at the primary races where polling did not pick up the movement (Gillum, Ocazio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley for example), I think there’s a potential for a lot of voters who are just not being picked up by polling, because they’re new voters or seldom voters. That’s what give me hope for the Senate. If somebody is within 4-5 points in polling, I think that a wave could pull them over the line.

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Kelly: Still waiting for mine. They should have been mailed yesterday; probably will arrive tomorrow.

    Eugene Weekly offered its endorsements today; unsurprisingly, not a single R made the cut. The Oregonian, on the other hand, endorsed Rethuglican Knute Buehler for Governor. So did Phil Knight, ponying over a cool million to Buehler’s campaign chest. Which means Knight is an enemy of the people.

  13. 13.

    Emerald

    Almost finished filling out my CA ballot. Got all of it except for a couple of races with two Dems running (I went for DiFi for Senate seniority, although I like DeLeon too).

    Got my hair cut today and the 20-something hairdresser said all of her friends are insisting that everyone vote! That’s the best news I’ve heard in two years. If that’s true and holds nationally we’ll get it all. Young folks don’t get polled.

  17. 17.

    Mary G

    I am determined to finish marking my California ballot so I can send it in and get to writing postcards full time. We have a thing where the governor appoints the Supreme and appellate court judges and then the voters approve or disapprove every 12 years. I just voted yes on all the ones nominated by Democrats and found a few extolled on old wingnut posts that I voted no on. And the OC DA race is awful – two dreadful Republicans. We need to pay attention to that next time and get some justice Democrats on the ballot. I ended up writing in a public defender who said they both suck. Checked the neighbors yards to see who not to vote for city council and all I have left is the page of propositions. It is tiring and I can understand why so many people won’t bother.

  23. 23.

    JPL

    The president is praising Gianforte for “body slamming” the reporter, Jacobs. Of course, the crowd cheered. The Washington Post just lost a journalist who was tortured and dismembered. wtf wtf wtf

  24. 24.

    Ruckus

    @Kelly:

    They’re desperate for a Republican that isn’t forming at the mouth.

    Such an animal does not exist any longer.

  27. 27.

    Tom cahill.

    @MazeDancer: I am sorry if this post twice but how do I send postcards to help Heidi Heitkamp? I am stuck in a hospital bed with a foot infection and it would be great to do something productive

  28. 28.

    opiejeanne

    @Kelly: Our Washington state vote-by-mail ballots get mailed out tomorrow. The voters’ pamphlet came out earlier this week and it’s going to take a little study to figure out that yes means no, so the right vote for Democrats/liberals/progressives is no, which means yes on at least one initiative. A current California ballot initiative has the same issue.

    We never mail ours in, we always drop them off at the nearest drop station, at the Redmond City Hall, but this time they are being sent out postage paid so no one has to worry about how many stamps to put on them.

  29. 29.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Mary G:
    I sent mine in a two days ago. Not so nearly complicated in Ohio. The Governorship, many state-level offices including seats on the Supreme Court some local county offices and levies as well as Issue 1, which is all about probation and drug sentencing reform.

  32. 32.

    Mary G

    @trollhattan: @MobiusKlein: Prop 8 was one of the ones giving me fits. It has a lot of big money for voting “no” online & in the mail, and usually I think that is bad, but it was put on the ballot by petition, which I usually vote no on anyway. The for and against arguments are both bad. It was a coin toss and I voted no in the end.

    Prop 6, killing the gas tax, was the only one I really cared about, because Darrell Issa sent me hundreds of emails and cards to vote yes, so I of course voted no. I like it when they make it easy. I voted for the housing bonds requested by the legislature, although it feels like it’s a bandaid.

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    Drat. My watch strap just broke. I think I should get a metal strap.

    As for Nazis, beating them in a shooting match doesn’t kill off the belief system. That comes from inside people. In any population, in any generation, there will always be some who come to these beliefs. The Confederates, who are of that same ilk, overcame defeat in your Civil War and a century later, have conquered the party of the victorious President. Eliminating the lead traitors of the 1860s wouldn’t have prevented the rise to power of the Confederate mindset a century later. I think you just have to keep bringing the better argument and shaming them when you can.

  34. 34.

    NickM

    I was listening to MSNBC on Sirius at 5pm eastern in the car (I couldn’t stop worrying about politics to listen to music) and they were freaking me out. All the talking heads were freaking about low Latinx enthusiasm. It was starting to freak me out.

    But then I thought – who has and always answers land lines anymore? Pretty much only old people – my parents in their 70s and 80s answer every call. My kids and I screen almost everything. Lots of young people only have their cells.

    And while a lot of conservatives have drank the cool aid/gone full Nazi, at least some of the ones I know seem to be a little ashamed of themselves. Maybe like the dog who eats out of the cat box they can’t help their foul hungers, but they also look a little embarrassed when notice the litter on their chops.

  35. 35.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT: Interesting thread. What’s in a name. A Twitter thread about names and giving children “inoffensive” names.
    Dear Twitter, A famous advice columnist is telling people to whitewash their kid’s names if they want to be accepted. How should I tell her that’s wrong and racist?
    I can sympathize because I have a name that people frequently mangle and I have to spell it out for them. I like my name why should I change it because it makes someone else feel uncomfortable. That Barack Obama didn’t go by Barry made me like him even more.

  36. 36.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @JPL:
    The total disconnect between how he acts at his rallies and how he (badly) pretends to act presidential everywhere else always disturbs me.

  37. 37.

    grubert

    @rikyrah: – you might not know that a bot network can make it look like a thousand independent people are all signing up for a legitimate account. Identifying which account is bot-driven means going over the tweets either with keyword algorithms, which make mistakes, or by human eyes, which also make some mistakes.

    It’s rude to cut off a legitimate, non-bot client, as I’m sure any number of infrequent commenters here can appreciate.

  38. 38.

    Mary G

    Well, I knew this was coming, but it’s still despicable: (WaPo) Conservatives mount a whisper campaign smearing Khashoggi in defense of Trump:

    In recent days, a cadre of conservative House Republicans allied with Trump has been privately exchanging articles from right-wing outlets that fuel suspicion of Khashoggi, highlighting his association with the Muslim Brotherhood during his youth and raising conspiratorial questions about his work decades ago as an embedded reporter covering Osama bin Laden, according to four GOP officials involved in the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

    Those aspersions — which many lawmakers have been wary of stating publicly due to the political risks of doing so — have begun to flare into public view as conservative media outlets have amplified the claims, which are aimed in part in protecting Trump as he works to preserve the U.S.-Saudi relationship and avoid confronting the Saudis on human rights.

    Ooga-booga the only good Muslim is a dead one, same old shit. I hate it.

  41. 41.

    Mary G

    @Mary G: Fred Hiatt, however awful he may have been in the past, is really stepping up to condemn this:

    “As anyone knows who knew Jamal — or read his columns — he was dedicated to the values of free speech and open debate. He went into exile to promote those values, and now he may even have lost his life for his dogged determination in their defense,” Hiatt said in a statement. “It may not be surprising that some Saudi-inspired trolls are now trying to distract us from the crime by smearing Jamal. It may not even be surprising to see a few Americans joining in. But in both cases it is reprehensible.”

    This Time It’s Personal.

  42. 42.

    opiejeanne

    @grubert: There was a filter that you could check on your own twitter feed to see if it registered as a bot, and mine was about half bot. I found that jarring.

  44. 44.

    opiejeanne

    @Mary G: I saw one today on Twitter, some woman claiming he was responsible for millions of deaths. I thought, so there it is, the justification for not caring about what happened to him.

    I also figured she was a bot or a Russian troll.

  45. 45.

    MobiusKlein

    @grubert: Where I work, we see fake accounts created by bots every night on a schedule. And those are the pathetically obvious ones.
    It’s dammed hard vs the state actors.

  46. 46.

    Ruckus

    @schrodingers_cat:
    I wonder if having a simple, accepted name is more or less the norm in the wider world? It’s quite common in White America, seems less so in many other countries/languages.

  48. 48.

    J R in WV

    I’m spending lots more time reading some favorite comic strips, like reborn Bloom County, Jane’s World, Frazz, etc. Have contributed more than we can afford, a little. Will contribute a little more, too. Have been asked to phone bank, not sure that really helps any now-a-days.

    I did get to tell a solid Trump voter “You need to vote how you need to vote — just remember it’s D for Democracy or R for Russian!” and hang up. Spur of the moment, but felt so good.

  49. 49.

    Jeffro

    @JPL: picture any Dem doing the same and the Reps’ reaction…truly there is a standard even beyond #DoubleStandards, and that’s where the GOP is at.

    Also of note: right now the NYT is running front page stories about how some Minnesota R might flip a D seat – woo woo – AND, and, how Dems are struggling to bring the ‘blue wave’ to bright red Alabama. Um, either this is some 11th-level chess stuff to make the Rs think they have 2018 in the bag, or I need to go get in some batting practice if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

  50. 50.

    Jay

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    It came back a lot earlier than that.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_(UK)

    Nazi’s started to come out of the woodwork in the late 1960’s in response to decolonialization, immigration from the colonies, and the economic boom requiring Guest Workers.

    During and after WWII, no Western Nation, only the Soviets, purged their Nazi’s and Nazi Collaberators. Instead, they were allowed to go quietly dark on the political side, while Police and Intelligence Services used them to try to supress Communist, Socialist and Labour Parties and Unionization.

    Many foreign Nazi’s in the West were armed, trained and used to conduct terrorism campaigns, assasinations in both the East Bloc, and against targets in the West.

    By the late 1950’s, Infighting amongst the Nazi Groups, their abject failure as terrorists, guerrillas, blowback from their operations in the West, and Old Age, caused Western Goverments to wash their hands of them and let them slink back into the shadows.

    The Second Generation “came crawling back out”, having been mentored on the quiet, in the late 60’s as I noted above. Hippies, Mods, Rockers and Skin’s eventually drove them back under their rock, with no help from the Cops.

    The Third Generation crawled out from under their rock in the late ’80’s, due to the economic dislocations caused by Reaganism, Thatcherism, Stagnation, along with the cultural changes of Gay Rights, Interracial relationiships, the Balkan Wars, and the last gasps of Rhodesia and South Africa,

    As ususal, they had been mentored by the previous Generation, but they were better armed, more violent, however, in the US, they lost many possible recruits to The Militia’s.

    Once again, the broad co-elition of groups, “antifia”, from fighting groups like the Spartacus League, to Civil Rights Lawyers, drove them back under their rocks, with a little help from the Cops at the end, when the Nazi’s had turned to hard drug running, bankrobberies, crimes for hire, to make “bank”, then used that “bank” for terrorist actions.

    So now we have the 4th Generation, mentored by the 3rd Generation and a few of the Second Generation, gestated and coccooned and promoted by the Tech Giants of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and given glowing writeups in the FTFNYT and their ilk.

  51. 51.

    FlyingToaster

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: If your state doesn’t, does your county or municipality? Because up here in the People’s Republic, the Secretary of the Commonwealth (also known as “The Prince of Darkness”) puts out a fairly bare-bones pamphlet, one per household. Then our town puts out its own, which usually goes into greater depth on the ballot initiatives than the state’s.

    If they don’t, check if there’s some equivalent to our [insert party here] Town Committees; one of my neighbors is on the Democratic Town Committee, and they always have “issue discussions” available.

  52. 52.

    Ruckus

    @Mary G:

    This Time It’s Personal.

    The mark of a true rethuglican. Doing anything that hurts someone is OK as long as you don’t do it to someone they know or to them. Cut SS, Cut Medicare, they think that’s great, less taxes, more for them. It’s all about the benjamins, mostly them getting to keep more of them. Of course a lot of morons think that rethuglican politicians couldn’t possibly hurt them. Would be nice to let them figure it out for themselves, but seeing as how they are morons…….

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @Mary G: Hey, if they can rationalize away supporting pedophiles, “very fine people”, and pretending like Jesus was all good with giving tax cuts to the rich and then taking away health care and security from the poor & elderly, it’s not a far stretch go excuse murder as long as it happens to someone else and that someone else happens to be Muslim.

    They can excuse anything. They actually think that “all the violence is on the Left”. Frickin’ Franklin Graham thinks he’s doing God’s work by embracing Mammon’s most complete example on Earth, Trumpov.

    We just need to beat them at the polling place; or barring that, just beat them.

  54. 54.

    Amir Khalid

    @Ruckus:
    It’s common for Chinese Malaysians to have a Western same preceding their surname (ETA: e.g. Michelle Yeoh, Jimmy Choo) as well as a traditional name after it. (Chinese given names traditionally go after the surname.)

  57. 57.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Ruckus: Depends on the country doesn’t it? Barack is not a difficult name to pronounce or that unusual a name in many parts of the world but was considered exotic and “foreign” here. Does everyone need a anglo name? Why shouldn’t a name reflect where they came from.

  60. 60.

    frosty

    @Emerald:

    Got my hair cut today and the 20-something hairdresser said all of her friends are insisting that everyone vote!

    Anecdata, but my 20-something son said all of his friends are registered and will vote.

  61. 61.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @Ruckus: I have been told that the Swiss govt may disallow the name you want to give your child. IIRC, common nicknames can’t appear on birth record; it has to be the name the nickname is for. Like Nicholas is ok but not Nick or Nicky.

  63. 63.

    divF

    @Mary G: I have a preliminary winnowing from the arguments in sample ballot. In the absence of any other information:
    (1) Vote opposite of the Howard Jarvis Foundation;
    (2) Vote opposite of Gary Wesley.

    That typically winnows the propositions down to a manageable number.

  64. 64.

    Chetan Murthy

    @schrodingers_cat: when I was growing up, there were -very- few Indian-American kids. So I Anglicized my name when I got to Texas. Well, more precisely, the kids I met on my first day at school, Anglicized it for me. I kept that Anglicization (“Chet”).

    But it never changed that at some level, I knew I was “washing my skin” to fit in. After enough years in California, I started feeling comfortable in my own skin. And [when I worked for Ye Olde Big-Ass Enterprise I/T Company] and met somebody with an “interesting” (hard-to-pronounce-for-Americans) name, I’d introduce myself, tell them my birth-name, pronounce it for them, explain how it was hard-to-pronounce for Americans, and then ask them to please help me to address them the way they’d like to be addressed.

    TL;DR I feel that (at least in some parts of the country, some social groups) this whitewashing is no longer necessary. At least, I hope.

    Which doesn’t change that I’ve been “Chet” since 6th grade. Too late (inside) to change now. Ah, well.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    Dan Eggen
    ‏Verified account
    @DanEggenWPost
    4h4 hours ago
    More
    Trump says ‘all Republicans’ back protections for preexisting conditions, despite repeated moves to repeal Obamacare Via

    I like the Washington Post but I really have been thinking about this, and instead of repeating the President’s lie and then correcting it, what if they just reported the story : “repeated moves to repeal Obamacare”

    The time for correcting the President’s lies has passed. Forget that. When he lies (daily) just report the facts of the thing he’s lying about. They really don’t have to point out he’s a liar- let’s let him do the lying and the media can do the truth-telling and let people make the connection.

    This calls for new approaches. The President lies constantly. New problem, new plan. No repeating the lie. Just cut right to the facts.

  66. 66.

    Jay

    @Jeffro:

    “Also of note: right now the NYT is running front page stories about how some Minnesota R might flip a D seat – woo woo – AND, and, how Dems are struggling to bring the ‘blue wave’ to bright red Alabama. Um, either this is some 11th-level chess stuff to make the Rs think they have 2018 in the bag, or I need to go get in some batting practice if you know what I mean. And I think you do.”

    The FTFNYT is not your friend.

    They are running these stupid memes to attempt to supress Democratic and Independent Voter Turn out, by making flipping the House and Senate seem impossible and are doing so deliberatly.

    From the 40 Year Hunt for the Clintons, through “Impeachment”, selling the Iraq War, hiding Bush Scandals, through to Emailz!!!!!!, Benghazi!!!!!! and Clinton Cash, while burying The Insane Clown POTus’s decades of crimes and scandals as effectively as the National Enquirer,

    The Staff of the FTFNYT is 4/5ths card carring Republican Ratfuckers like Maggie, with 1/5th there to create the illusion they are an actual news organization.

  69. 69.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Mary G:

    Fred Hiatt, however awful he may have been in the past, is really stepping up to condemn this

    It’s good he’s doing this. But …. every conservative has some “pet issue” where they’re liberal. So for Fred, maybe it’s the way Mr. Khashoggi was …. (ugh) mistreated. Unless he changes on a few other issues, he’s STILL just a standard-issue conservative. Heck, Jennifer Rubin has changed (for the moment) on a bunch of issues, and I *still* don’t count her as a real “ally”. Sure, I’d say a kind word for her in House of Commons, but that’s it.

    Hiatt has to do a lot more than this.

  71. 71.

    frosty

    @A Ghost To Most:

    Maybe in another150 years, the Civil War will finally be over.

    Read Albion’s Seed. The Civil War was fought by the same sides as the English Civil war (1600s?) between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. It will never be over because the fight is over two different world views: Community vs. Aristocracy maybe?

  73. 73.

    Kay

    Let’s try it out. Pretend it’s a dialogue. Liar says “all Republicans support covering preexisting conditions”. Person who is not a liar ignores lying President and says ” all Republicans voted to repeal coverage of preexisting conditions”

    Same information, but we skip promoting the lie. It’s not about proving them to be liars anymore. That ship has sailed. Now it’s about issuing facts.

  74. 74.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ruckus: Working in France in the 1990s, there were at least two currents:

    (1) IIRC there was some law about the given names of French-born people. Like, had to be from some book. I might be misremembering.

    (2) But some massive number of French-born people had a grandparent born elsewhere — so it was already changing

    and (3) there were lots and lots of non-French people [partially b/c of the EEC/EU] and they had non-French names.

    I feel like, we’re uniquely monocultural here in the US. But I could be wrong. My only experience of a different culture was 3yr working in France.

    ETA: But then, I found “foreign” food in France to be uniformly horrible. Asian food was “Frenchified”. Maybe that was b/c I wasn’t wealthy enough to afford the authentic stuff. The only stuff that seemed authentic was the North African stuff (couscous!)

  79. 79.

    Citizen Alan

    @Ladyraxterinok:

    I think Australia does something like that. Laws were passed after public outrage due to some poor child being christened “Tallulah Does the Hula On The Beach” or something like that.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Jay:

    It’s been two years. This isn’t working. They have to try something else. There’s no law that says they have to put the lie first.

    Put the lie second. Or third. Better yet, don’t repeat it at all and just make the “correction”- it’s not like there’s going to be some magical transformation and if they’re caught in enough lies they’ll stop. Drop the whole “debunking” thing- just go right to bunking :)

    Something like 65% of people think he’s dishonest. They don’t need to be told he’s dishonest. They DO need to be told Republicans all voted against preexisting coverage. Any connections they make between “President” and “lying again” they’ll have to do by themselves. The 35% who think he tells the truth are probably beyond help at this point anyway. Triage. Save the truth. Salvage something.

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    @Chetan Murthy:

    True fact: France has strict baby-naming laws because Napoleon Bonaparte hated his first name and thought his parents should have been prevented from saddling him with it. It was part of the Napoleonic Code when he did legal reform of French laws.

  83. 83.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jay: as usual, our mistake was not emulating Stalin!

    @schrodingers_cat: the primary question is whether or not you want your kids to be able to go to Disneyland and buy mini license plates with their names on them.

  84. 84.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    I have no idea what language “woti” is. I have never heard anyone use the word. The National Registration Department does have some odd rules about name format. For instance, only Chinese people get to have a surname. Everyone else has to go by Givenname Middlenameifany Surname a/l Dadsname (or a/p Dadsname if female). a/l means anak lelaki, son, and a/p means anak perempuan, daughter.

  85. 85.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ruckus: It’s a norm that is enforced by pushing each new immigrant group to conform. I remember lots of Israeli people with Americanized Jewish names, whose jewish friends continued to call them by their original Israeli names. I also remember the same about lots of immigrants from Eastern Europe, growing up [remember how Polish jokes were a thing back in the 70s in the Philly area?] and if I thought hard enough, I bet I could come up with other examples.

    The norm has always needed *enforcing*.

  86. 86.

    Bill Arnold

    @Kay:

    This calls for new approaches. The President lies constantly. New problem, new plan. No repeating the lie. Just cut right to the facts.

    Not sure if it could be made to work, but something like “President Trump suggested in a tweet (see footnote) that we report on a topic of interest to many Americans. ”
    Several columns of factual reporting.
    Twitter text (just text) in a footnote, including time date and perhaps a url.
    Or similar for a spoken statement, with transcript segment including a little context, and maybe audio. After the article.

  87. 87.

    Jay

    @Kay:

    In the case of speeches, announcements, etc, Reporter’s are supposed to report, that’s it.

    Editorial and Opinion Writers are supposed to “fact check” and inform, but horse racing and bothsiderism’s easier.

    The MSM is not your friend, other than a tiny handful of Reporters and Writers.

    Even CBC Reporter’s don’t fact check the Insane Clown POSus’s puke funnel.

  88. 88.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I found “foreign” food in France to be uniformly horrible. Asian food was “Frenchified”.

    General de Gaulle’s Chicken is the worst

  90. 90.

    Mnemosyne

    @Amir Khalid:

    It does seem to be primarily an ethnic Chinese thing to do — the people I know who added a “European” first name are all from China, Taiwan, or are ethnic Chinese from another Asian country. People from Japan or India usually keep their own names, though families who have been in the US for more than a couple of generations usually start to give their kids the names that are popular culture-wide.

    When we were working on a project with a team in China, everyone had a European first name … except Mr. Feng (not his real name). Apparently he was never able to find a European first name that he liked or that people thought suited him, so he was just Mr. Feng to everyone.

  91. 91.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @FlyingToaster:
    Not as far as I know. I’ve never gotten one in the mail. I’ll check out that Town Committees thing to see if I have one in my area.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @Amir Khalid:

    IIRC, people in Iceland don’t have “real” surnames the way the rest of Europe thinks of them. They still get a first name followed by their father’s first name plus -son or -dottir depending on one’s gender.

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Chetan Murthy:
    They are single issue centrists. Don’t hurt people I know, don’t hurt my pet issue, but people I don’t know, issues that don’t affect me, you can fuck them till there’s nothing left, not even a bloody puddle.

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    Don’t have the link handy at the moment but recall reading that also banned as a given name in Malaysia is any name or model of Japanese car.

  99. 99.

    Ruckus

    Interesting to hear about names from around the world.
    I’ve heard a lot of names over the years from other countries/languages that are difficult to say to person who doesn’t speak that language. And maybe some that are just difficult to pronounce. Many people my age in the US have rather simple names or at least nicknames. Is it because I’m used to pronouncing them or is it the naming convention? Because for many people I’ve known from other countries this isn’t so, even seemingly for people used to the language.

  100. 100.

    Steeplejack

    @Mnemosyne:

    It does seem to be primarily an ethnic Chinese thing to do—the people I know who added a “European” first name are all from China, Taiwan, or are ethnic Chinese from another Asian country.

    Some years ago I worked in a software group that had three Chinese programmers—Lily, Rosa and I forget the third one. Mary, maybe, or Marian. My mind went to outlandish theories about oppressed Christian émigrés, etc., but one of them explained to me that they used Western first names because Chinese is a “tonal” language and Westerners almost always butchered their Chinese personal names (usually two syllables). Apparently it’s a common practice. Certainly shows up a lot in the credits for Chinese movies.

    And, of course, one of my honkie co-workers had to make a big deal of learning what Rosa’s “real” name was. She told him, he repeated it, and she said, “Thanks, you just called me a small dumpling.” End of story.

  102. 102.

    Jay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Stalin and the other East Bloc Governments had the top tiers executed, midlevels could sometimes retain a career if they had become anti-Nazi early enough, scientists were used, but “re-educated” and closely watched, low levels had the Nazi worked out of them in the Gulags.

    Our mistake, that we keep making, is believing that the Enemy of our Enemy is our Friend. Quite often the Enemy of our Enemy is our Enemy. Too often our Enemy is not our Enemy but their Enemy is.

  103. 103.

    Steeplejack

    @MazeDancer:

    Jesus. You do realize that “Get Names” is almost invisible?! It’s a tiny, dark-rust-on-black text button (against a black background) by the woman’s left elbow in the illustration. I had to actually search for the text phrase before I could find it. Might want to, uh, highlight that a bit.

  104. 104.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Steeplejack:

    And, of course, one of my honkie co-workers had to make a big deal of learning what Rosa’s “real” name was. She told him, he repeated it, and she said, “Thanks, you just called me a small dumpling.” End of story.

    Heck, that happens with my sibs and my given name. They can’t pronounce it, b/c they were born here and never learned the required phoneme. So when they pronounce my name, it comes out wrong. My cousins and mom can do it, of course. As can various Indian-American folks who grew up in India and came here for grad school. So it’s not just Chinese people, whose names get mangled.

    Notwithstanding, I think the important thing is to learn how a person wishes to be addressed, and address them that way as carefully and faithfully as possible.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steeplejack:

    When G found Charlotte and her sister kitten Olive in a parking lot, the sister kitten Olive was adopted by his coworker who was originally from Taiwan. She gave Olive a Chinese name, but would refer to her as “Olive” when she gave us updates, so the three of us joked that Olive was a proper Taiwanese cat because she had an American name and a Chinese name.

    (Sadly, Olive died young from surgery complications. Poor kitty. ?)

  107. 107.

    Mnemosyne

    @Chetan Murthy:

    My Indian-American friend’s younger sister was always called “Shubie” by just about everyone though apparently it just meant “little sister” or something similar. She got so used to it that she just kept it and apparently even her patients (she’s now a pediatrician) call her “Dr. Shubie.”

  108. 108.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Chetan Murthy: my law school roommate’s ancestors were from Lichtenstein and none of our professors could pronounce his last name.

    Maybe I just went to a bad law school?

  109. 109.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Jay: I was being facetious, but you knew that.

    Our mistake, that we keep making, is believing that the Enemy of our Enemy is our Friend. Quite often the Enemy of our Enemy is our Enemy. Too often our Enemy is not our Enemy but their Enemy is.

    Too true.

  112. 112.

    Citizen Alan

    @NotMax:

    I was not born in sunny Hispania
    My father came from Rovno Gubernya
    But now I’m here, I’m dancing a tango
    Di de di de di de di!
    I am easily assimilated
    I am so easily assimilated

  113. 113.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack: @MazeDancer: As he got older, my dad used to write letters to places that published things that can be easily read by a 20-something, but near impossible to read when you got to be his age. It really annoyed him.

  114. 114.

    mozzerb

    @NotMax: Peter Strzok?

    IIRC from “Language Log”, don’t foreigners in China (who are doing more than just pass through) typically select a “Chinese name”, presumably on the same grounds of pronouncability? More generally, going with the fitting-in option or not sounds like a choice that can best be left to the individuals concerned (or their parents in the baby naming case).

  116. 116.

    laura

    @trollhattan: YES on Prop 8!
    Make for-profit (and they are basically ATM machines for the owners) accept Medicaid as full payment for services. End stage rental disease has ‘this one weird secret’ in that it receives Congressional legacy special treatment that Mayhew/Anderson could probably explain better than I can.
    And for the love of all that is good governance, please CA voters, NO on 6!

  117. 117.

    Procopius

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: That’s funny, I remember stories about neo-nazis and skinheads in Germany and England. My memory is really deteriorating, but I’d swear that was in the ’60s and ’70s. The U.S. Army as Occupation Force hired a shitload of Nazis because they were the experienced administrators. A lot of American military officers were admirers of the Nazis and openly stated we should have allied with Hitler to fight the [Russian] Communists. Really, the f^cking Nazis have never gone away, but they were forced to be quiet for a while. Same thing with the Klan, really.

  119. 119.

    J R in WV

    No doubt a dead thread now, but here goes anyway.

    My last name is Swiss, a simple two syllable word that is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable. Americans have about a 30% chance of saying it correctly first try. If they say it with the wrong emphasis, it sounds like a common American last name out of Ireland.

    So not just Asian naming.

    Also, there is also a group of families out of Romania with the name spelled the same way, but they put the emphasis on the last syllable, all wrong deliberately. Or not, I don’t care, they tend to be Republicans.

Comments are closed.