Hey everyone!
Been a while. Pandemic blues and a steady flow of ongoing work and general sloth. But anyway, Adam’s been on my case, and he’s managed to goad me back on the horse.
So…
Been thinking about this cancel culture bullshit a lot lately–I’ll post separately a story I told on Twitter a few days ago that takes a historical look at the great heaping mound of bad faith ordure that is almost all of the handwringing. I am so out of fucks to give for the anguish of the well-platformed about having their views marked to market, and a possible (devoutly to be wished for) loss of monopoly control over who gets to speak where.
The “argument” for cancel culture is that internet mobs unjustly victimize speech and speakers who are merely making arguments, even if unpopular ones. The theory seems to be that those putting forward such views, should not face a response that goes much beyond “I disagree.”
To which I, and anyone with either a sense of the urgency of the moment or an awareness of history says, bullshit.
Let’s see why, using an example that is slightly out of the usual turf of defenses of the brave disputes about whether Black people are biologically or merely culturally inferior to white Europeans.
I don’t know how many of y’all have been following the latest in medical twitter, but #MedBikini seemed so bonkers to me that I didn’t really credit at first.
What is #MedBikini? Well:
Titled “Prevalence of unprofessional social media content among young vascular surgeons,” [the inciting paper] appears in the August 2020 edition of the Journal of Vascular Surgery (and online in December). Six of the seven listed authors have ties to Boston Medical Center, including Dr. Alik Farber, chief of vascular and endovascular surgery at Boston Medical Center.
Here’s excerpts from the paper’s abstract:
Objective: …Our goal was to evaluate the extent of unprofessional social media content among recent vascular surgery fellows and residents.
Methods: The Association of Program Directors in Vascular Surgery directory was used to compile a list of graduating vascular surgery trainees from 2016 to 2018. Neutral Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts were used to search for publicly available information…Potentially unprofessional content included: holding/ consuming alcohol, inappropriate attire, censored profanity, controversial political or religious comments, and controversial social topics.
Results: …Potentially unprofessional content appeared in 58 accounts (25%) and included holding/consuming alcohol (29 accounts, 12.3%), controversial political comments (22 accounts, 9.4%), inappropriate/offensive attire (9 accounts, 3.8%), censored profanity (8 accounts, 3.4%), controversial social topics (6 accounts, 2.5%), and controversial religious comments (2 accounts, .9%). [emphasis added].
Which is to say seven doctors, six male and one female, decided to scrape a bunch of social media accounts. They hired three guys to set up fake accounts to gather the goods on Twitter and Facebook and score them for stuff like this:
…the most common forms of potentially unprofessional content were holding alcohol (25 accounts, 12.4%) and controversial political/religious/social comments (20 accounts, 10%). Inappropriate attire included pictures in underwear, provocative Halloween costumes, and provocative posing in bikinis/swimwear. Controversial political and religious comments were any derogatory or demeaning comments directed toward an individual or specific faith. Controversial social comments were largely limited to comments centered around specific stances on abortion and gun control.
You get the picture. A bunch of established doctors (as in, people with power) took to “research” to tell residents to keep their yaps shut and not take pictures of themselves at the beach.
This went over about as well as you may guess.
#MedBikini sprouted with joyous anger. Many, many docs posted pictures of themselves in bikinis (and other swim/outdoor wear), with or without an adult beverage in hand. Many many doctors noted the sexism and power-flexing built into the study. Some called out the authors, especially the first author, Scott Hardouin, MD, for this bullshit. Most of #MedBikini
The scorn and mockery and righteous anger had its effect. From the Boston Globe article linked above:
The clinical research study drew so much scrutiny that by Friday afternoon its authors had apologized and — in an extraordinary move — called for a retraction of their own work, according to a statement from BMC.
Boston Medical Center tried to distance themselves from their employees’ work:
A spokesman said the paper was “ill-conceived, poorly executed, and reinforces biases about professionalism and gender” and doesn’t represent the values of the hospital.
I was glad to see that many folks included in their disdain for the work the political censorship being attempted:
While many of the posts led to people sharing photos of themselves in bathing suits or out for drinks — combined with pithy responses — others rebuffed the idea that health care professionals should tamp down on sharing personal opinions about certain major public health issues, like gun control and abortion, which the study called “controversial social comments.”
…“I support #MedBikini, but more importantly I would also ask [the authors] to justify the suggestion that physicians shouldn’t speak out about abortion and gun control,” the person wrote.
A couple of the authors went onto Twitter to apologize and attempt to explain. It went less than perfectly, and one of the authors quoted in the Globe article has closed down his account.
OK. With all that two thoughts:
1: WTF? I mean seriously–what the everlasting fornication? I’m 61 years old, a cismale white dude in a professional position of privilege at least vaguely similar to that enjoyed by the authors of this study and I’m simply gobsmacked that anyone of the seven signatories to the article, much less the reviewers, editors etc. could possibly have thought this was a useful/valuable/well-conceived/not-sexist-as-hell/body-terrified/politically censorious/terrified bullshit. Must have led a sheltered life, me.
2: How does this incident inform the cloud of deflecting emanations around the notion of cancel culture. In some ways, it seems to match perfectly what the Andrew Sullivans and Bari Weisses of the world decry. Someone had a controversial thought: wearing bikinis is relevant to medicine; talking gun-control is a distraction from practice or what have you. They studied it! Did a study and everything. (Not sure about the human subjects issue, but heck, why let such concerns interfere with the pursuit of truth…) And they published it…
And people read it and ripped it to shreds using every tool from point-by-point analysis to ridicule.
As a result, some consequences have begun to bite: the paper itself is being retracted, it seems. The journal and the authors’ hospital are apologizing. At least one doctor has ditched twitter. The first author has been repeatedly named and shaped in social media. Some or most or maybe all have been “cancelled” in that their work has been dismissed with prejudice and their public personas have been attacked and diminished.
To which I say…
Welcome to the market place of ideas, friends. This paper’s authors said some stuff. Others in position to respond told them they were full of shit, and that’s how it’s supposed to go.
TL:DR There is a ton of bullshit, “hot takes” and allegedly sober “just the facts, ma’am” research that is passed as intellectual currency–and is debased. It’s not just permissible but vital to call out such crap thinking–that’s what free speech is supposed to do. There are human costs that follow: if your arguments turn out to be shite, or even just subject to criticism, correction and revision, then embarassment (in the first instance) or more work (in the second) will be required.
But what would Sullivan, or Pinker, or any of the other stalwarts against such internet-based choruses of response have people do? The authors of this study said, out loud, unprompted, fully of their own accord, that young doctors wearing bikinis was unprofessional. Should those they thus accused have simply taken this claim in silence?
Really TL:DR…
A) I and almost anyone I can imagine doesn’t give a shit what our doctors do on vacation as long as they keep up with the latest research and take good care of me/us.
B) The shock and horror within the false crisis mongering of the anti-cancel culture brigade is almost entirely a rejection of the idea that traditional power structures are subject to the same scrutiny everyone else faces all the time.
Image: Georges Seurat, Bathers at Asnières, 1884.
Cheryl Rofer
I am so glad I managed to miss all of that one. I saw tiny snippets of it from time to time and decided my time was better spent elsewhere.
I love that people are being called out on this stuff. It’s about time.
gwangung
You have the first amendment right to say anything you damn please.
I have the first amendment right to tell you that you’re full of shit. And so do my friends. If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
Walker
It has since been established that the authors likely violated IRB. They did not get permission to know the names of residents.
mobile.twitter.com/londyloo/status/1286873283120463879
BruceJ
It is deeply telling that all of these people bewailing “Cancel Culture” are complaining that opinions and ‘papers’ that are all about punching down are gathering enormous criticism.
It is all about maintaining the status quo power struture. The likes of Pinker, Weiss and Sullivan are terrified that their sinecures as ‘Public Intellectuals’ are no longer accepted as proof of their superior position in the hierarchy.
WaterGirl
If I could have seen the finished post (that wasn’t finished yet) I would have realized you weren’t dashing this off, about to post at any minute. :-)
HumboldtBlue
That’s all that need be written about this latest pearl-clutching from the same tone-deaf fumbledicks who wanted blogger ethics panels.
These assholes were able to remain aloof of the real-world reactions to the absolute garbage they produce and print when the old media ran the show but that is no longer the case. Start putting your stupid shit online and you’re gonna hear about it.
Baud
There were no pictures in the study. How am I supposed to assess the data?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Thanks for summarizing that, Tom, so we don’t have to wade through it. One of the things that makes this particular episode odd is that published scholarly papers are supposed to draw criticism, though it’s usually of the “did not study all possible variables” variety. Apparently it was the social media involvement that counts as canceling. But the original paper is, frankly, more like something I’d expect to see discussed on social media to start with. IOW, bullshit.
Tom Levenson
@Baud: That’s what the hashtag is for.
Tom Levenson
@WaterGirl: No one has ever (accurately) accused me of concision, so it’s a generally a good bet that
I’m not going to post with dispatch
Baud
@Tom Levenson:
Thanks! Some of those docs are cute.
I need to change doctors.
WaterGirl
@Tom Levenson: I will keep that in mind next time!
I worked for a fellow who used to say “Why say a word when a paragraph will do?”
He had you beat by a mile!
WaterGirl
@Baud: Priorities, Baud. Priorities.
Ruckus
@BruceJ:
Bingo!
I can hear the responses from the shovelers of male bovine excrement off in the distance as we cancel them out…….
How dare you decry my bullshit!
My bullshit is superior to your bullshit in every way!
I make my living shoveling bullshit, what the hell do you think you are doing complaining about my shoveling bullshit?
My bullshit is better than your bullshit!
Without my bullshit I’ve got nothing, how am I supposed to grift a living without bullshit?
Ad infinitum – because BS is never in short supply.
J R in WV
They could have spent that effort on a study of gun violence and the physical damage it causes to children under 18 y o.
They could have done a study on birth control and the relationship between excellent birth control and poverty.
They could have done a study on specific causes of very late term abortion — death of fetus, non-viability of fetus, potential death of the mother, etc, etc.
But no, they decided to attempt to push down on younger members of their trade!! Jerks. Not willing to work with them, to consult with them, to send them patients. Perhaps they will note a drop in their practice income?
Bex
David Brooks both-sides it. nytimes.com/2020/07/21/opinion/substack-newsletters-writers.html
Barbara
There are definitely uses of social media by professionals that raise ethical concerns, but it sounds like these doctors among other things started out with ideas about how doctors are supposed to behave in private, equated any nonconforming acts with being unprofessional, and used that as a basis for tramping on people not like them.
H.E.Wolf
Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin) wrote the definitive word on the topic during the 1970s, in her etiquette column.
From Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, first published in 1979.
bbleh
THANK YOU for pointing out what a steaming heap of BS is all the noise about “cancel culture.”
As I’ve observed elsewhere, we should stop even dignifying the silly term by using it or by adopting its implicit framework. It’s just a right-wing chew-toy, manufactured by their propaganda mills, amplified by their pet media, and then duly echoed by mainstream outlets desperate for controversy and the attendant ad revenue. It’s a fiction.
And as to the specifics of claimed examples, it’s just more right-wing whining, on a par with “men’s rights” and “white lives matter.” Honestly, I have never seen a bigger bunch of whiners, not even at a daycare.
MagdaInBlack
@H.E.Wolf:
I loved her. I have that book around here somewhere. It was just fun to read.
sublime33
The two biggest victims of Cancel Culture were The Dixie Chicks and Colin Kaepernick. Except “We don’t want to offend some of our best customers” only applies to music and sports and not to newspaper columnists. It’s only Cancel Culture when your side does it to my side. When my side does it, it’s OK.
HumboldtBlue
OK, let’s see if I can get it right in the daylight, WaterGirl.
Yutsano
UGH!!! One more time…
xkcd.com/1357
Kent
Well, here’s an example of real-life cancel culture. Let’s use Federal law to cancel Nikole Hannah-Jones:
randy khan
So there actually is an interesting topic there, but it has nothing to do with the actual study. My list of inappropriate behavior would include patient-shaming, racism, statements about not caring about patients generally, and the like – you know, things that relate to patient care and how you treat your patients. (I would include alcohol, but only to the extent someone posted something like “operating with a hangover, again!” or some other violation of professional ethics related to drinking and/or drugs.)
But this stuff is just stupid.
Ken
I think that’s illegal, or at least can endanger any federal funding your institution is getting.
dmsilev
@Kent: He then, and I swear I’m not making this up, gave an interview in which he declared slavery to be a ‘necessary evil’. Necessary for who?
NotMax
Snark gold, that.
Another Scott
I glanced at the paper a day or few ago when it showed up on Popehat’s (?) Twitter thing. The December on-line publication date caught my eye. It’s interesting that stuff like this can be online for 7+ months but the (mostly deserved) firestorm of criticism blows up in just a few days once the “right” people mention it on Twitter.
There’s probably some important lessons there (e.g. be very careful about hot-takes you find these days; don’t publish stupid stuff).
Thanks, Tom.
Cheers,
Scott.
Calouste
1) I’m surprised that the journal didn’t email the lead author saying “Dear Doctor, I writing this to make you aware that some prankster is submitting ridiculous bullshit under your name.” Probably because the editors are all chums of the professor.
2) I wouldn’t be surprised if all 7 authors are members of the same church (probably Mormon or Baptist, considering their hang up about alcohol), and that the professor has been preferentially hiring members of that faith.
Kent
@dmsilev: Yep, it’s always projection with these folks. “Necessary for my ancestors to get rich off the labor of others” of course.
dmsilev
@randy khan: Right. Adult beverages while on the job, that I have no objection to calling ‘unprofessional’. Likewise wearing a bikini or any other form of swimwear, unless you happen to be at a beach or pool and someone had a medical emergency. But when you’re off duty? Give me a break.
Calouste
@dmsilev: Necessary for the white aristocrats, who are too lazy to be able to do work themselves.
Mike in NC
“Post-Misogynist America” — is that visible from the Hubble telescope?
Another Scott
@Calouste: Nope.
From the link:
Something else I just noticed –
It was presented at a conference before it was published??!
There were failures in this “work” a year or two or more before it appeared in print…
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
I don’t do twitter, except through my browser.
Is there a link to the twitter thread for this? Or is there a way to get to that through my browser, just from the hashtag?
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Obsolete. Thanks WG!
Cheers,
Scott.
Kelly
Off Topic but Hurricane Hannah is knocking down Trump’s wall.
twitter.com/yadithvaldez/status/1287449431004942339
Google translate: And as well, “Hanna” knocked down part of the border wall being built between the US and Mexico. For the fury of nature, there are no borders
Soprano2
I had a conservative friend approvingly post on FB a sign at a bar that said due to them approving of the players kneeling they would no longer broadcast any NFL games there. My reply was “So they’re ‘cancelling’ the NFL? I thought ‘cancelling’ things was bad. I’m so confused….” Got absolutely no reply to that, of course.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Just click on Tom’s #MedBikini link above. It shows you the format and takes you there.
(Thanks for freeing my post above.)
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I think I caught it before you posted this, so you should be good now.
opiejeanne
@Baud: The scolds are out. I told one to wear a burka if she wants, but we don’t live in a society run by the Taliban.
Kathleen
@dmsilev: Cue NYT to solicit another Op Ed from him. “A Roof, Clothing And 3 Squares – An Alternate View of ‘Slavery'”
opiejeanne
@H.E.Wolf: I loved Miss Manners when she was carried by the LA Times.
Redshift
@Kent: But remember, people who want Confederate statues taken down are “erasing history.” ?
prostratedragon
@H.E.Wolf: A view from the other side of the river.
jlowe
Nothing wrong with a little physician self-care. If PubMed is any guide, physician burnout is a rapidly growing field of study.
Benw
I cancelled a man in Reno
Jus’ so he’d say Twitter bye bye
When I hear that ratio blowin’ (up)
I hang my head and cry
encephalopath
The fact they they had people pose a interested social media followers so they could gather their “data”… damn. That didn’t strike anyone involved in this as a giant ethical red flag?
JPL
@H.E.Wolf: That is the best explanation by far.
Ken
Some years, perhaps decades, ago, a post noted that the main complaint Christian fundamentalists have with the Taliban is copyright infringement.
HinTN
@WaterGirl: Use the hashtag
Ken
@Kelly: That sort of thing happens when you award the construction contracts based on kickbacks and political connections. We saw it with the Hurricane Maria relief, so it’s nice to see it turn around and bite Trump.
Kay
MomSense
It seems like the biggest whiners about cancel culture are the formerly powerful or their remora who functioned as gatekeepers deciding who got articles, film and tv roles, bookings on news and entertainment shows, etc. They had an established censor culture where they controlled who and what was heard. They never thought the invisible hand of the marketplace would pull back the curtain and expose their bullshit and they don’t like it.
prostratedragon
@dmsilev: That made me look to see what’s known about his family background. According to Wiki they’ve been in Arkansas for 7 generations, which is suggestive but not sufficient. Most recently cattle people, which would not make large-scale use of field hands. Personal background makes him clearly one not to lose track of.
The Pale Scot
@Walker:
So this is more like cops who run the license plates of attractive women. Betcha they got phone numbers and lotsa pics “I going to need to study these in more detail”
opiejeanne
@Ken: HA! That’s a good assessment.
This scold posted a Bible verse about considering our bodies as a sacrifice to God, yada yada.
From her photo I’d guess she never goes to the beach unless covered from head to toe in something like a caftan, and that she doesn’t have a “bikini body”, which has a certain meaning but should really mean any body type.
Benw
@Kelly: that’s awesome
Baud
@Kay:
I wish the Philly Phanatic were president right now.
opiejeanne
@The Pale Scot: This study just keeps getting more disturbing the more I think about it.
The Pale Scot
Something tells me that those rate your doctor websites are going to melt from the acid comments pouring onto them
Haroldo
@Tom Levenson:
I’m not going to post with dispatch
I guess we’re not meeting, then, in St. Louis, Louis. It just wouldn’t be fair.
Steeplejack (phone)
This is a hilarious—and long—thread about cancel culture and related issues. Well worth a read.
Kelly
If liar’s pants really did catch on fire watching the Sunday news/talk shows would be a lot more fun.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
The big ma… umm… the big furry green umm… well the Phanatic is busy right now.
Another Scott
Good, good. Roast ’em, Don.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kent: Party of Lincoln, ladies and gentlemen
opiejeanne
OT, but did Trump just chicken out on throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium?
Another Scott
thehill.com/homenews/administration/509091-approval-of-trumps-handling-of-coronavirus-hits-new-low
In general, the NORC knows how to do proper polling (they run the GSS), but I don’t know the details of this particular survey.
68% approval of anything for a GOP president among the GOP is deadly low.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@opiejeanne: Yup.
He says he’ll reschedule it for later in the year. (Probably after the season has been canceled.)
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Cheers,
Scott.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
2020 continues it’s reign of terror
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@opiejeanne: Magic-8 Ball says “Yes”
Aleta
Twitter, Fb, Insta skew our sense of reality. And brains skew toward making what we find there meaningful. They used scraping for ‘research’ because it’s there, and because social scientists are doing it. Some people (on twitter, ha) also write about how Twitter etc. greatly affect mood and judgement. But it’s still weird to see the judgement of doctors and scientists affected, even though they too, as humans, are not objective and can be as susceptible as anyone else to distorted thinking.
opiejeanne
@opiejeanne:
LMAO! He doesn’t want to get booed again.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the
@Yankees
on August 15th. We will make it later in the season!
dmsilev
@opiejeanne: Yes. Anyone who believes his excuse that he’ll be too busy doing actual work is stupid enough, well, to vote for him.
The Pale Scot
WTF? One of the authors,
Dr. Erica Mitchell, who performed procedures and held leadership positions in OHSU’s Division of Vascular Surgery, left in June 2018 after 12 years over frustrations with how she was treated, the suit says. In extensive detail, it alleges that at OHSU she endured a “two-tier working environment that favors men over women.” The complaint names three male physicians as defendants, including Dr. John Hunter, executive vice president and CEO of the OHSU health system, saying they contributed to a sexist environment.
Stockholm syndrome?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Baud: He’s really good with the women vote (video)
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: If I’m reading this correctly, it looks like his first pitch was originally scheduled for August 15th.
This is the equivalent of saying he’s going to be busy washing his hair.
Kay
@opiejeanne:
He did. He’s afraid to go. Say what you will about Fauci, he showed up. And then all of Twitter made fun of him and he could give a shit.
prostratedragon
@opiejeanne: Will there be any baseball fans there? Right now the games are running with sound designs. The one for the Yankees-Nationals game yesterday was pretty good, much as if the stadium was crowded.
Maybe he doesn’t trust the sound designer.
dmsilev
@Kay: Fauci is an actual baseball fan, and throwing out a first pitch was undoubtedly a huge thrill for him, no matter the circumstances. Trump, not so much.
OGLiberal
Andy Sullivan thinks the cancel culture is the number one problem with this nation. That and the Mongol hordes invading Portland. And the Ghost of Stalin-led BLM. He may not say that outright but given his obvious obsession can’t see how I can assume otherwise. I gave the dude the benefit of the doubt during the Bush years – allies of convenience – but he is a racist, sexist assneck.
Now, a moment of silence for the trials and tribulations of our dear Bari.
HumboldtBlue
@prostratedragon:
Actually, it’s the Black Lives Matter that is painted on the back of every pitching mound that has scared his silly ass away. Imagine the Twitter posts with his fat ass flopping a pitch in the general vicinity of the catcher with BLM at his back.
opiejeanne
@prostratedragon: hahaha.
yeah, I’m watching the A’s vs Angels game and the sound guy is doing a pretty good job of it, but they can be hilariously snotty sometimes and I wouldn’t put it past the guy at Yankee Stadium to play a recording of very loud booing, dead silence, derisive laughter, or maybe all three not in that order.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Stanford Tree/Mrs. Met 2020
Dorothy A. Winsor
@HumboldtBlue: Also the players might kneel. And even if there are no fans to see him flop, there will be cameras.
opiejeanne
@HumboldtBlue: The back of the pitcher’s mound? Do you mean behind the catcher?
I’m not seeing it in Oakland, but the camera angles don’t show the wall directly behind the catcher.
Never mind, I just spotted it. It’s on the back side of the mound, like you said.
Kay
@dmsilev:
Oh, I’m glad. I hope he enjoyed himself. I was surprised at how old he is- he has a very youthful energy.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Oh, it’s all over the Twitterverse.
RIP their DMs, though. ?
I think I saw some really great candidates for some next significant other, if I weren’t old, gross and cranky.
Ken
Meaning there’s a 99% chance Trump will be golfing on the 15th, probably at the exact moment of the first pitch.
EDIT: 99.9999%, I hadn’t noticed it was a Saturday.
Frankensteinbeck
@opiejeanne:
He canceled something he had already scheduled? My guess is he discovered his neural degeneration has gotten to where he can’t throw a baseball at all.
Eric S.
@opiejeanne: Just told my dad a couple hours ago he’d back out. No way he could take the embarrassment of the inevitable bad throw.
debbie
@sublime33:
Exactly. How many of the whiners cheered on the War on Christmas (which now seems like a billion years ago)?
Martin
Fucking GOP. I don’t need a $1200 check you dickwaffles. Either extend unemployment or organize a competent pandemic strategy.
Kay
@OGLiberal:
I’m deeply uncomfortable with the piling-on aspects of internet attacks so if they had just said “we should be kinder to one another” I would have been open to it, but instead they have this whole THEORY that is so poorly defined and incoherent that it almost guarantees it will be used in bad faith- and it is being used in that way. The Right has completely adopted it and now apply it to everything uttered by a liberal. It’s their fault. They’re supposed to be professional writers and thinkers. Clean it up. Define it.
dmsilev
@Martin: Or both. Both would be good.
I’m asking too much, aren’t I?
opiejeanne
@Martin: Why not both?
H.E.Wolf
@MagdaInBlack:
@opiejeanne:
@prostratedragon:
I agree with you all! She has always been adept at using humor to illuminate; and she has long been a strong advocate for treating others well.
neh.gov/about/awards/national-humanities-medals/judith-martin
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: Throwing a ball is hard. Seriously.
About 15 years ago a neighbor’s baseball ended up in in our yard when I was doing some yard work. I picked it up to toss it back, and I think it went about 5 yards before it did a pitful bounce and they looked at me like I was half-dead or something.
My excuse was it had probably been 25 years since I’d thrown one… :-/
;-D
Fauci is secure with who he is and loves the game. Donnie thinks he’s the reincarnation of Home Run Baker and cannot tolerate being humiliated and laughing at himself.
So, of course, he will not do it.
Cheers,
Scott.
CarolPW
@Kay: He gave an interview I read somewhere (WaPo?) and it sounded like he absolutely loved it. He is a huge baseball fan. He may not have been too surprised by his medal of honor, but I suspect he never dreamed he would be throwing out a first pitch!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: To answer your question from Thursday* regarding the mask ordinance here in Glendale, any time you’re not on your property or in your car you must wear a mask.
* I didn’t see your question until much later since I’d fired up the Prius and drove to Joshua Tree.
@Martin:
You might not, but some of us do.
Kay
Is this the wall in question?
Kay
@CarolPW:
Ugh I would HATE it. The pressure!
“Easy out!” still ringing in my ears from childhood baseball games :)
Salty Sam
I watched a twitter clip of Fauci’s (endearingly) bad pitch. Since Dr. Fauci is now determined to be an Enemy, downthread right-wingers were jeering his effort, and as noted, Fauci has no fucks to give about that. What caught my attention was the brag that “It is well known that Trump, in his first year in office, threw a 97 mph fastball right into the strike zone when he threw out the first pitch of the season. Our most athletically superior President ever!”
Trump has famously avoided the shame of looking bad on the mound. I blame Russian bots for that tweet…
trollhattan
@Kay:
Melt that sucker down and turn it into Chebby pickups.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: Yes. And here’s an update –
Ruckus
@Martin:
A dramatic number of people could use a lot more than $1200. So do we spend a year building a bureaucracy, deciding who, what, when, how much, etc does every person deserve, at a cost that far exceeds the cost of just giving each adult $1200 and then give them $500, because who can possibly use $1200 and look how much money that is? It’s not like we can’t print more…. in a once in a century pandemic with a virus that spreads like oxygen itself.
Salty Sam
If you were always last one to be picked for a team, come on over and sit by me…
Elizabelle
@Cheryl Rofer: Hanna! You go, girl!
I hope that clip is in heavy rotation on Fox.
opiejeanne
@Kay: I made them pay for that “easy out” BS. By the end of 4th grade I always hit the ball and, even though it wasn’t ever a home run, I always made it to base. I was smaller than the other kids, a skinny little kid.
Dad told me how to connect with the ball when I struggled at first, although he waited for me to ask him.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
That looked sturdy….. What was that a 10mph gust?
HumboldtBlue
And I can I just say that I still say dmsilev’s nym incorrectly in my head because I have always said it incorrectly in my head and now it’s annoying me that I have to stop and re-say dee-emm-silev and not dee-smile-ev?
I can?
OK.
Elizabelle
@Martin: Hey there. I am so sorry to hear of your dog’s passing, and you lost another pet this week too??
My condolences. I hope another lucky pet or two or three ends up in the Martin household.
Salty Sam
I have a dream that the Biden Administration will initiate such a bureaucracy the Monday after inauguration, and it will sensibly evolve into the forerunner of Universal Basic Income for Americans.
Well, a guy can dream, can’t he?
Doug R
@Baud: twitter.com/manofbird/status/419909844263374848
jayjaybear
@Baud:
Hell, I’d take Gritty at this point.
Ruckus
@Salty Sam:
Best for last right?
Yeah not all of us were/are ever going to be sporting greats. Often for a lot of different reasons. At my 50 yr reunion every one of those HS sports heroes was just another guy with a job and a mortgage
Aleta
How funny that Scott Hardouin et al. wrote
as he exposed himself to be a doctor with no awareness of ethical use of social media. And that Hardouin’s says his research objective came from his concern that
when knowledge of his bias would certainly affect some patients’ choice to avoid him and has affected his reputation among some peers.
At the end of the statement published by the Journal’s editors, they write that “the authors of the ms. are fully committed to perform more informed research on these issues in the future with a more diverse team,” which I interpret to mean Hardouin has not given up the idea that his judgements are meaningful.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@opiejeanne: except in high schools where we apparently do. Ask any teen girl who has been sent home or given embarrassing clothing to wear at school for wearing something deemed “distracting “ some schools don t allow girls to wear sleeveless shirts for fucks sake
opiejeanne
@Salty Sam: I was, and even though I could hit, I still can’t throw for shit. It embarrassed me when we had to take the JFK President’s Physical Fitness test and we were handed a big fat softball to throw. Ugh. My hands are small.
gene108
#MedBikini would make a helluva a dating site.
Aleta
@Ruckus: But they sure knew how to swagger down the linoleum of a hallway of lockers.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Salty Sam: and me..it’s hurtful to be referred to as Awkward by ones own child.
Kay
@opiejeanne:
You overcame! The only thing I was ever good at was ice skating. My kids were so cute when I took them out the first time. “You’re good!” – like they couldn’t imagine there’s things they don’t know about me. I had a LIFE, jerks.
Salty Sam
@Ruckus:
Heh! As an introvert/loner, I never gave a flying fvck about team sports. I got much more satisfaction from individual pursuits. At my last reunion, a lot of those Type A sports hero types had graduated from job-and-mortgage to Shady Rest Memorial Gardens…
joel hanes
This sign seen in a bodega seems germane:
De 100 problemas que tienes
10 son por pendejo, y
90 por metiche
Roughly:
Of each hundred problems you make for yourself,
only ten are because of your own stupidity —
the other ninety come from sticking your nose into other people’s business
opiejeanne
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Hell, my youngest wore a darling dress to her 8th grade graduation dance and even though it didn’t have spaghetti straps (oh, the horror of spaghetti straps!) they deemed the dress to be too risqué because you could see her shoulders and collar bone on either side of the straps. A friend loaned her a denim jacket so she didn’t get sent home.
I was a costumer, ran a business designing and clothing actors in SF, Ice skaters, roller skaters, dancers, cabaret shows, etc. I knew wtf I was doing when I dressed my daughters. I was glad I never had to deal with those asshats again. Junior High was the worst for me as a kid and as a mom for all three of my kids.
Patricia Kayden
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: The actual stars of my senior year football team didn’t come to the 50th. Half were dead, and the rest didn’t show. The one idiot that did is an obnoxious RW asshole, but we should have seen that coming 50 years earlier.
joel hanes
@Ruckus:
At my 50 yr reunion every one of those HS sports heroes was just another guy with a job and a mortgage
and fucked-up knees and sub-critical CTE
NoraLenderbee
Salty Sam
My two boys have always given me much grief about… well, pretty much everything. One day we were going through a box of old photos, and younger son holds up a picture of a skinny-dipping couple at Hippie Hollow, “Hey Dad, who are these hotties?”
”Oh, that’s me and your mom. Our first date, to be exact.”
THAT shut ‘em up for awhile.
opiejeanne
@Kay: LOL! We had a social group at our Methodist Church, the adult Sunday school class, and we did a bunch of fun things together. One event was roller skating, and I watched in awe as my husband of 10 years went out on the rink and skated circles around everyone else. He knew how to skate backwards!
I never knew he could skate until that moment. My version of skating was just rolling as long as possible before falling down, although each spring as a kid I got pretty good at the not falling down part. .
Ruckus
@Salty Sam:
We could do that, we could also work to make the tax code less agreeable to building fortunes and maybe a little more amenable to building businesses that actually pay reasonable salaries to people, and a reasonable minimum wage. With unemployment and disability right in the mix. I’m not necessarily against a UBI, I’m just not seeing how it will work given that not everyone wants to work. OTOH there is a segment of the population that currently live on the street and who the republican party would gladly see just die tomorrow and how is that reasonable?
Joe Biden is not going to be that person to do as you desire. He’s not built that way, he doesn’t have the time and probably doesn’t have the political power to accomplish that, it’s a huge change. I truly doubt I’d see that in my lifetime. Look how much of the government workers seem to be ready for a war upon their fellow citizens, that doesn’t bode well for actual progress. We have to work on the concept that it’s to each his own preordained life to live. We’ve made education far more costly over the last few decades, to the point that many can not access it. We’ve made manual labor a less necessary thing but also a demeaning low paid part of the system and just those two things alone have fucked us for a while. Let alone that we’ve off shored a lot of production that means that we don’t have the experience to actually do a lot for ourselves and we did this because there is money to be made off of selling crap to people who can’t afford the cost of a great life because of low pay and shitty go nowhere jobs.
Rant not over, just done for the moment.
opiejeanne
@Salty Sam: I ran into one of those guys about five years after HS, and he was delivering furniture for a local department store. It was shocking to me how dumb he seemed, I mean really dumb. I don’t think I ever talked to him during my time in school, so I didn’t know.
It felt odd that he might resent me for having a much better life than he had, as if I was lording it over him (I was not), since he had been one of the popular kids simply because of football.
Kent
Haven’t got to my 50th yet. But the star all-state tailback on my HS team who I shared a backfield with for 3 years has covered himself in glory since then.
First he gets thrown into prison for spousal abuse after a reign of terror and abuse towards his wife and violating multiple restraining orders.
Then when he finally got out on probation he goes on a camping trip with his son where he pistol-whips his son in a drunken rage, blunding him in one eye and cracking his skull. So, back to prison for another 8-year stint for assault and weapons violations. All that ‘white-on-white’ violence, whatch you gonna do?
He just got out on parole from all that and I saw him posting on FB, mostly just fishing photos in cammo and the usual bunch of MAGA rednecks I went to HS with in Oregon are congratulating him for getting out and getting his life back together.
Of the other receivers and backs that I played with? One is a bail-bondsman in rural Oregon and the other has a Roto Rooter business. Both are peak MAGA on FB.
Yeah…I’m not going to go to my 40th in 2 years.
H.E.Wolf
@NoraLenderbee:
I know, right?
She’s one of the greats!
Salty Sam
@Ruckus: Rant?
you are preaching to the choir here brother.
It will be a multigenerational task, if we make it that far. I did say it was a dream…
Aleta
@Kay: Once I mentioned to my nieces that the first time I met their mom she had just come in from windsurfing. Their eyes filled with disbelief. “Mom used to windsurf?” A tinge of child sarcasm. An idea that was further outside their world than their questions about extraterrestrials.
Ruckus
@Aleta:
Most of them were pretty normal at my HS. Sure some had heads so big they couldn’t fit thru a doorway and yet seemed to have no trouble fitting it up their own asses.
OK that last sentence may be somewhat tainted by my working in professional sports, 20 yrs as a hobby and 11 full time. I met some amazing people and gee, imagine this, just a few dipshits so full of themselves that one could get the impression that asshole was a desired trait that they studied to get better at.
Kent
Just wait until they are a bit older and think they INVENTED sex.
opiejeanne
@Kent: He pistol-whipped his son and blinded him in one eye? Yikes!
Kent
Yep. These are my people. Blue collar white working class suburbs of Eugene, OR. His son sued him for $400,000. Here’s the police blotter news report
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Father+ordered+to+pay+damages.-a029965480
Originally they had to call in a SWAT team to deal with him the first time when he was menacing his wife http://projects.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/cityregion/24521512-46/briefly-metro.cs
We grew up about next door to each other and played football and track together from 7th grade through HS. He was good enough to play college ball but basically flunked out of HS once football season was over. Now the MAGA faithful are welcoming him back with open arms. They know their own.
Salty Sam
Same here, only my guy was driving a “honey wagon”- the big vacuum tanker trucks that suck out the contents of septic tanks and porta-potties. It suited him…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Salty Sam: I saw some nice supportive tweets too, like “Fauci just didn’t want anyone to catch anything.”
planetjanet
@Ruckus: The people who need it are the unemployed. They are fixing the wrong thing.
Ruckus
@Kent:
One of the advantages of growing up in CA I guess. Fewer dipshits in HS. Granted there is no where without dipshits, but fewer is nicer than more. And yes there are a number here in the land of whatever, just a smaller percentage. I mean CA has Devin the cow Nunes as a rep. There are still a few.
Kay
@opiejeanne:
I think it matters when you learn. It’s one of my earliest really clear memories, learning to skate. Brown hockey skates, the kind with the double blade. Which later I found out were “boys skates” and I was supposed to have white figure skates, which I got solely because of peer pressure :)
My husband skies and it’s just effortless- he learned at 5 or something. I have to work so hard at it.
Kent
In a lot of ways, Oregon is basically Appalachia or the Ozarks with a 3 or 4 blue cities dropped in. I grew up in the poorer blue collar north side of Eugene which was definitely across the border in red America, even back then. The “hippy-land” down by the UO campus in south Eugene might have been 1000 miles away. Most of my friend’s dads worked in lumber mills, drove log trucks, and/or lived on crappy farms. October was always a battle of male authorities between the football coaches who wanted the kids at practice and the dads who wanted to take them out of school for their week-long hunting trips.
Salty Sam
What I still don’t understand is those who are willfully, proudly ignorant. I grew up with quite a few of them…
Ruckus
@planetjanet:
A lot of employed people had to take time off. Like me. A lot more should have taken time off and sheltered in, but they couldn’t because they had to work regardless, to pay rent, to eat. We are in this mess partially because of money. Yes mostly because shitforbrains really does have shit for brains but also because he thinks the federal budget is his to spend how he wants.
The money is important because some people do have to keep working, in the face of overwhelming need to stay away from everyone else. Some don’t need it, sure. But the cost to separate out those is far more than the cost to just give them money. And I don’t care if it is free money or you don’t need it. It’s still the best way to get it to people so they can do the right thing. Look around and tell me not paying is working. You can’t because it isn’t.
Kent
It’s laziness cloaked as pride.
Kay
Well. I can tell they’re all going to be treated with rigorous fairness and all process due in the Barr justice department. Between Homeland Security proclaiming they’re all criminals and the President smearing them as a group, I hope they have good defense lawyers.
The Trump people have lied to judges so many times I’m not sure they’re credible in a non-Trump loyalist court anyway.
Ruckus
@Salty Sam:
Well a lot of people don’t want to do anything but sit on their asses and drink beer, eat cheeseburgers and fries and enjoy the good life, like shitforbrains. OK he doesn’t drink beer. Watching people with way too much money do nothing to earn it has a cost.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Do you really think they are going to end up in court? I’m not sure.
If barr can not ensure that he can imprison them through the court system will he take them to court or just hold them for as long as he can get away with, under conditions that this maladministration knows how to create, from first hand experience? I expect nothing proper from this crowd, they have nothing that would cause them to do the right thing, hell they’ve proven that by their actions to date.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@opiejeanne: I had the same arguments with people at my daughters high school. I keep asking people why they don’t teach their sons(not to mention school administrato rs) not to see girls as a collection of body parts instead of actual human beings.
@opiejeanne:
Just One More Canuck
@opiejeanne: or sad trombone when he can only throw the ball 15 feet
Paul W.
“TL:DR There is a ton of bullshit, “hot takes” and allegedly sober “just the facts, ma’am” research that is passed as intellectual currency–and is debased. It’s not just permissible but vital to call out such crap thinking–that’s what free speech is supposed to do.”
This. Anyone enforcing polite society, though I want to be careful about overuse of whataboutism from the far left Twitteratti that Obama’s ICE deported (mostly violent and criminal) illegal immigrants so he’s just as bad as Donald “kids in cages and no medical attention” Trump that crowds out real discussion and calls for action. You don’t have to be polite, you can do it in a bikini and have a “professional” job while also partying with your friends and not be excluded from engaging in powerful jobs and the like.
Unsympathetic
“Cancel Culture” is basically right-wingers being very angry that when they exercise their right to free speech to “own the libs”, some libs use their freedom of speech to respond in kind.
After all, only conservatives have rights.
lawnorder
It seems the paper authors never asked for permission…
twitter.com/londyloo/status/1286873283120463879