Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki had hotwife/cuck relationships with a series of young men, the first of whom has spilled all the beans. Via Michael Cohen, Trump probably leveraged this relationship to get an endorsement out of Falwell.
We know that Cohen struck up a relationship with Falwell as far back as 2011/2012. We know that he got involved in helping keep the couple’s secrets, including hushing up compromising photos of Becki. It was as late as 2015 when Cohen helped the Falwells deal with the photos – photos which were apparently connected to another fit young man close to the couple.
I’m sure a lot of stories will be written about the sexual details of this relationship, but the fucking disgrace of it all is that a charitable organization was flying around young men in its private jet for assignations, and large sums of money were given to these guys. This isn’t (just) a sexual scandal, it’s a fraud scandal, and Falwell should go to jail for stealing money from donors and violating the tax code. I’m just going to guess that the fraud won’t be the headline in most papers. Fuck who you want how you want, as long as its consensual and no minors are involved, but unless hotwifing is a tenet of your religion, pay your fucking taxes on the money you use to transport, house and employ your fuckbois.
germy
“Hotwifing”
I didn’t know there was a name for it.
download my app in the app store mistermix
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hotwife
PaulWartenberg
I need to keep up, so this is the stuff Falwell Junior is accused of, isn’t Franklin Graham facing sex scandal stuff too?
Ian R
@germy: For any imaginable fetish:
Hoodie
It’s always the grift. We now have betrayals of the three legs of Trump’s base: (1) wrecking the “wonderful economy” (he inherited from Obama) through mismanagement of COVID; (2) ripping off xenophobic Americans (who were never going to get their wall) through allowing and even supporting Bannon’s hijinks; and (3) cover up the kinks of the fundagelicals’ leader to blackmail him for support even though Trump is a complete libertine.
Yutsano
@germy: I’m actually pretty open to these things, but that’s a new term to me as well.
JPL
yup
Betty Cracker
Josh Marshall (as linked in the OP) has been all over the extortion angle for the endorsement in 2016 and points out that it was a big fucking deal at the time. He’s right.
Kay
Evangelicals don’t care about hypocrisy and fraud. It’s just a really strange religion. There’s no accountability at all in it. There’s a million rules but none of them ever enforced against the members- they only apply to people who are not members. If he’s “in” and says he’s sorry that’s the end of the analysis.
I genuinely don’t get it and never have. It’s not rigorous at all.
MattF
And, yeah, ‘cuck’ is the all-purpose RW insult. Yet another entertaining diorama for the Museum of Psychopathology.
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
Ranks right up there with “underbusing.”
Calouste
@Kay: Accept jeebus as your savior and all your sins past, present, and future are forgiven. That sounds like a really good deal to some people.
Citizen Alan
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
The most amazing thing to me about all this is that one of the biggest go-to insults that Trump Trash have for Democrats is that we’re all “beta cucks.” I know we like to say that everything with Republicans is projection, but I have never heard of a Democrat paying to watch someone else have sex with his wife, and yet it’s all over the place in the GOP. Hell, arguably we only got President Obama because Jeri Ryan was so disgusted by her husband Jack Ryan pressuring her to get gangbanged in a sex club that she dragged out all his dirty laundry in the middle of the 2006 Illinois Senate campaign.
Martin
I wonder how much of Trumps evangelical support is thanks to Trump/Cohen/Pecker blackmailing Falwell over this?
Kay
You think of the other fundie religions – they are forbidden to do this, or eat that, etc. but this applies to the MEMBERS.
Not fundie Christians. The restrictions only apply to people who are not members. Just nuts. It’s as if you were in an HOA and you said “no one outside this HOA can have blue shutters!” Why belong to the HOA at all?
PJ
@Kay: It doesn’t matter that Trump extorted Jr’s endorsement, Trump is still God’s instrument, and so is Jerry Jr.
lgerard
Looks like this story might need a bit more investigation
CliosFanBoy
@Ian R: It’s a tag on PornHub. um, so I’m told, by a friend.
Hoodie
@Martin: Initially, probably quite a bit. Falwell was an early validator. Now, it depends on how much they’ve fallen into the cult of personality.
Kay
@Calouste:
I get the “protection” part but wouldn’t it just be easier not to cast the first stone?
The only people they need protection from is themselves. I was not telling them what to do and frankly I would rather not know what they do.
Baud
@Kay:
The Blue Shutterites are immoral and going straight to hell.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
Rank hypocrisy is one of the key attributes of our Talibangicals. Maybe the most prominent one, actually.
Damn, but I would love to see the looks on the faces of the many holier-than-thous who were at a close family member’s (well, their daughter — recent Liberty grad) wedding in Lynchburg a couple years back, when they encounter this “Revelation”.
This needs to be weaponized as much as possible against the hordes of people who are in various intersecting versions of this incredibly-toxic form of religion, because they constitute the most important bloc of foot-soldiers for American-style fascism. Falwell and Liberty U aren’t bit players, either, but currently sit at the very top of the heap.
Kay
@PJ:
The truth is they show extremely poor judgment and that’s why they’re always having to excuse their leaders.
They pick bad people. Consistently.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: A lot. But it goes beyond Pecker and Cohen. It has been repeatedly reported that the President has the phones at his commercial resort properties set up so he can listen in and record calls whenever he wants. Specifically, Mar a Lago. It has been repeatedly reported that he would call “friends” whose wives he wanted to have sex with, try to get them talking about women who are not their wives about having sex with them, tape those calls, and then if the “friends” he was talking with took his bait, he’d call the wives and play the recordings for them to try to manipulate them into having an affair with him to get back at their wayward husbands. It has been widely reported that he would regularly insert himself into high profile divorces for well connected and influential people, including offering his executive conference room at Trump Tower as neutral ground for the negotiations. Which he then had recorded. The reporting on this only names one notable person, Rupert Murdoch, that did this. Basically, this allowed the President to have a complete record of Rupert Murdoch’s divorce that he could later use as leverage with Murdoch and therefore with all of his news media properties. It would not surprise me it it eventually comes out that the dining rooms at Mar a Lago and his golf clubs and resorts are bugged, as well as the conference rooms and ballrooms so that everything said at meals, at events like weddings and fundraisers, etc is routinely collected for his use.
dmsilev
@Citizen Alan: That was 2004. I had just moved to Illinois from Maryland, so that race gave me the rather uncomfortable feeling that Alan Keyes was following me across the country.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Kay: So that you can have blue shutters, I guess.
Keith P.
This story is what frustrates me about media. The Granda story was already pretty well-known, but also well-known was the story about Falwell and his wife’s personal trainer (there was an odd pic of Jerry and the trainer during a livestream). I haven’t seen a single story about the latest allegations that mention that Falwell later helped his personal trainer acquire some Liberty U. land to build a gym. How many more of these guys are there?
dmsilev
@Martin: Originally, a lot. Now, though, Trump is the head of the cult and it basically doesn’t matter what he or anyone does or says as far as the core supporters are concerned.
Martin
@Kay: It’s about who is in and who is out. That’s the point. That way they can take the benefits of society and deny the benefits to those who are paying for the benefits.
It’s why they move so seamlessly in and out of racist and sexist positions – they’re just other instruments to achieve the same goal. Evangelicalism has the same moral foundation as theft. It’s just more ambitious in scope.
Kay
@Baud:
He should be shunned! That’s what the fundie religions with standards would do. Without the shunning it’s just scolding and lecturing people who aren’t even in your religion. They took all the hard parts out.
Eunicecycle
@germy: I thought it had something to do with WiFi.
Winston
Katie Porter was disappointing after all this time. I did like AOC though.
Adam L Silverman
@lgerard: This is the other major cheating and fraud scandal that will eventually break. Though in this case, Falwell’s trainer is married. So either his wife is involved in the affair or Falwell got his husband to cheat on her.
different-church-lady
The question here is: what might Falwell know about Trump?
GregMulka
@Ian R:
https://xkcd.com/305/
XKCD is almost to Simpsons level of they did a comic for that.
PJ
@Kay: That’s because the only thing that matters is that the leader publicly say the right words, defend the group, and attack anyone outside the group. For them, that’s the function of a leader. Actually working competently, and attaining any goals, or being, you know, a morally good person and doing good works, is irrelevant. It’s about making the members of the group feel good about themselves. (This isn’t just evangelicals, but many kinds of cults, and I would say racists, too.)
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: That’s my sense too.
It seems to me there’s a zillion lessons here you could give us regarding the hazards of creating circumstances for blackmail (not in the nature of the relationship, but by lying about being a moral beacon against that kind of relationship), the consequences of being caught up in that blackmail, and what this probably tells us about Trump who probably knew he had this in his pocket when he decided to run.
The value of this wasn’t realized today – it was realized back in 2015 when Trump knew he could build on top of Falwells lie, with Falwells help.
Just Chuck
@Ian R:
Also known as Rule 34 of the Internet: if you can imagine it, there’s porn of it.
LuciaMia
Cant Falwell blame it all on political partisanship, like Bannon?
Ken
@Ian R: The strong form of Rule 34 says that if you make up some completely bizarre fetish – say, by drawing nouns at random from the scrabble dictionary – you’ll still find websites and jargon for it, because they spontaneously spring into existence at the moment you imagine the fetish, with false histories going back six years.
JaySinWA
@Kay: How are they supposed to get pleasure from breaking a taboo if they don’t have a taboo in the first place? Check and Mate.
Martin
@different-church-lady: Only that Trump was blackmailing him. Which is enough.
zhena gogolia
Dammit, you guys, I have to get some work done!
I took a break from listening to Ray Liotta — I mean DeJoy, and went out to get my mail because I had seen the truck a minute before. The truck was still there. As I got closer, I saw the mail carrier leafing happily through my TV Guide, not in any big hurry to move on. I started laughing and turned to go back in the house and tell my husband, and then the truck sped off down the road.
sdhays
How the hell did I forget that Dump allegedly used this to blackmail Falwell for an endorsement??
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
Let’s do Lindsay Graham next. Mitch McConnell might be in line as well.
Mary G
I love this woman:
Kay
@PJ:
I liked a lot of the things they tell kids “bloom where you are planted”, “you’re second, other people are first” – I like aspirational standards- but now I just take inspirational quotes from Friday Night Lights and it’s basically the same ideas. These are universal ideas, can we agree on that? :)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Adam L Silverman:
As I said in the basement, I think he and Becki transitioned to full-on swaps.
MattF
@Martin: However, the story doesn’t appear to have a Russian angle… Yet.
PJ
@zhena gogolia: I would bet that Mitch McConnell hasn’t actually thought about having sex, let alone had it, in years. His wife, on the other hand, may be another matter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
sure as hell didn’t sound like “spy gate” to me
catclub
@Adam L Silverman: This suggests competence and patience in carrying out a scheme, It also suggests some well paid technician keeping quiet.
I am doubtful.
zhena gogolia
@Mary G:
She is good.
ETA: What’s so revealing about that clip is the arrogant smirk on his face. It says, “How in hell does this woman expect me to know what the little people have to pay to mail a postcard? And why should I be expected to know anything about the business I’m supposedly in charge of?”
International Mikey
@Ian R: and there’s a resort in Jamaica that will accommodate it…
JaySinWA
The power of pervertative thinking?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Re-upped from below:
I blogged about people being happier if they have a project. I think we’ve talked about this sort of on BJ sometimes.
PJ
@Kay: There’s a reason why platitudes become platitudes.
Martin
@zhena gogolia: Throw Hannity on that pile.
Hard to tell among conservatives who is being blackmailed and who is sufficiently motivated to do anything for the grift.
Kind of expect to learn that they’re all blackmailing each other – like a mafia family. The only way to win is for nobody to ever talk, but everyone has something on everyone else.
PPCLI
As I recall, Paul Manafort also had a taste for watching his wife with other men. In Manafort’s case his wife found it extremely distasteful and was put under major emotional pressure to do Manafort’s bidding. I suspect something similar was the case here.
catclub
so that’s what they are calling it nowadays.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@zhena gogolia: TV Guide? Wow, you are a traditionalist.
Adam L Silverman
@Keith P.: There’s a picture that Falwell put out just last week on social media of him, with his trainer, doing hip thrusts where he has two teenage girls, and they were young teenage girls, clearly under 16, giggling and fawning over him, stand on each side of the bar, inside where the weights are, to add additional “weight” to the lift. He had 235 on the bar. But the whole thing was creepy and I say that as someone who has maxed out a leg machine and asked a friend who is a trainer, though she is my age, to stand on the rack because I can’t add any more weight. What Falwell was doing was not this. It was just sort of creepy. Given the religious community he’s in and grew up in and their history of grooming young girls for early marriage, I’m not surprised by this, but it is still creepy.
JaySinWA
That kind of describes what Falwell is accused of.
PJ
@Martin: Bingo.
RaflW
On the topic of fraud, Rep. Katie Porter has drawn blood.
Holy hell. He should be a smoking ruin by sundown. The Postmaster General doesn’t know who took the most consequential decision of 2020 for the USPS.
But of course Trumpers will try to brazen it out. We shall see.
PJ
@JaySinWA: Ha!
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I am! They have good articles, and they alert me to things of interest coming on streaming. They also have a crossword puzzle.
hells littlest angel
@Adam L Silverman:
Yucch. No wonder he’s never been able to find the time to do his fucking job.
cmorenc
I was skim-reading too quickly through this sentence and at first misread the following portion as: “as long as it’s consensual and no mirrors are involved”… Um, what’s the problem with tha….OH! minors! Well, never mind :=)
Ken
@zhena gogolia: And not just a crossword puzzle, a Magnum PI themed crossword puzzle.
Fraud Guy
@Kay: It’s a bad amalgamation of the concept of being the chosen people of god and predestination. God knows/has chosen who will be who will be saved (the Elect), and they will be saved regardless of whether that person lives a blameless life or one full of sin (as it is the will of God, and beyond mortals). I think it was Calvin who started this thread.
Since they are Elect, they can do whatever they want, and God will save them in the end.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve been busy this afternoon and just checked in. So Trump already spoke today? Is he speaking again tonight or is that it?
RaflW
On this sordid* subject, I still don’t think this is the whole story. I just do not believe that Jerry sat in a chair and just watched. Nope nope nopity nope.
*consenting adults are free to do as they wish. It is sordid because of his position as an evangelical and president of a school with a strict moral code, as the OP makes clear.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No way that is spy gate. If he said spy gate, trump would have started a chant, rather than just giggle and move along.
PPCLI
@RaflW:
DeJoy: I have no idea who ordered the sorting machines removed, I’m mad as hell about it, but there is no goddamned way I am going to let them be put back.
Martin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He’s speaking again tonight. Every night apparently.
This is going to be the wildest run of grievances we’ve ever heard anywhere.
RedDirtGirl
@Kay: It seems to me that they can sin all they want because they will be “forgiven” by their god. It is the godless lefties and democrats that are truly evil, since they don’t have a god to clean up their messes.
Ken
No, pretty sure it was mistermix.
Seriously, though, the idea of a pre-selected elect has been around since at least the first century, and there’s a passage in Romans that’s usually cited by those who believe in it.
Kristine
@Fraud Guy @Kay
I remember a mid-80s era co-worker who said the same thing. I forget whether they called themselves evangelical or born again, but they felt that it didn’t matter what they did in this life as they would be saved in the end.
Do I need to add that they were a really shitty person?
:
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: The NYT covered the possible endorsement-getting scandal. In 2018!
Ken
He’s speaking every night, and if today is typical he’s also going to take up as much of the day as he can. I pity the people who have to adjust his meds.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@JaySinWA: Hah!
MattF
@Ken: Also Revelation. Try googling on ‘144,000 saints’.
JaySinWA
@JPL: What was that blue/gold dress audio thing? Where you heard two different words? yanny/laurel? I swear the first time I listened I expected Monkey and I heard Monkey, replaying later I hear SpyGate and something inaudible.
Of course Donny’s response doesn’t make much sense if it is SpyGate.
JPL
The events of the last twenty-four hours include
Kellyanne
Melania says mean things about her husband (well, duh)
Jerry Falwell
Eric Trump took the fifth
DeJoy see no evil, hear no evil
various crimes and probably no misdemeanors
What am I missing?
MattF
@JPL: It’s a day of the week ending in ‘y’.
JPL
@JaySinWA: I hope you interpretation is correct, because if he did say monkey, they need to boot him from the convention.
rp
@Baud: But teal is fine, right?
Ken
@JPL: Trump lies over 60 times in his morning remarks at the RNC. But that’s not really news, is it?
patrick II
@germy:
My vocabulary has grown (but not necessarily improved) in the Trump years.
Aleta
The biggest disgrace is the blackmail-type coercion that Trump and cohorts use to gain money and political control.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Sleepy Joe” didn’t take off though. Either did “China Flu”. Is there anything lamer than a derogatory nickname that no one else picks up and uses?
laura
The hypocracy and the Benjamin’s. Who but men of “faith” are free to make a buck off of their pussy fever and deign to tell others how to live a life “walking their faith.”
Same as it ever fucking was. In his name.
Kay
@Aleta:
I knew he was blackmailing people. It was the obvious reason they’re all so terrified of him.
I don’t think GOP congresspeople want him to win. We’re the only people who can save them from their own cowardice and weakness. We’ll get rid of their fucking MONSTER for them, because they were too chickenshit to do it themselves. You’re welcome, Republicans. You spineless weasels.
JaySinWA
@JPL: My interpretation is that he said something obnoxious, possibly monkey, but like the laurel/yanny thing the audio is so distorted that what you hear is based in part on expectations and the audio quality of the equipment you are playing it on.
But nobody is getting booted from that convention for saying something racist.
Delk
And yet my 21 year monogamous same-sex relationship is destroying traditional marriage.
UncleEbeneezer
Yeah, I could care less if people want to watch their spouses have sex. It’s a pretty common kink as various websites illustrate pretty clearly with the prominence of categories like HotWife, SharedWife, Swinger and other voyeuristic terms.
“Cuckold” is a bit more problematic because it usually has some blatant racism, sexism and homophobia in the mix, which is why Republicans love to use “Cuck” as a slur. The insinuation is that the recipient of the slur isn’t man enough, straight enough or white enough to control/please his wife and it is based on a notion that the wife is his property. This last part is what makes it such a popular term amongst conservatives because wife-as-property is pretty much central to their worldview.
James E Powell
@PJ:
Most especially that last one. The fundies get a weird high when they are talking about the people they hate.
zhena gogolia
@Kay:
Hahaha
Jeffro
@JPL: didn’t the stuff from trumpov’s sister (where she says he has no principles/can’t be trusted) break over the weekend?
Spanky
@PPCLI:
Congress takes a dim view of being lied to, and all it will take is one email proven to come from DeJoy. He may think he’s safe, but I doubt Trump will remember him in the long list of pardons he’ll be trying to sign on the morning of January 20.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I haven’t listened to the audio, but I’m struck by that screenshot. “Florida – 122 delegates at stake“.
WTF? It would have been bizarre in the DNC, which actually had a contested primary, but it’s just so absurd for the RNC, which didn’t even have an uncontested primary.
And I knew that Dump was going to be speaking every night, but f*ck! He’s just going to be hanging out there all week? There’s no point in pretending he has other shit to do? As, you know, President of the United States?
zhena gogolia
@Delk:
inorite
Flanders' Other Neighbor
Remember Ozzy vs Jimmy Swaggart?
A devil with a crucifix
Brimstone and fire
He needs another carnal fix
To take him higher and higher
Now Jimmy, he got busted with his pants down
Repent ye wretched sinners, self righteous clown
Ozzy is no angel, but he also never claimed to be.
SiubhanDuinne
@Winston:
I thought they were both terrific! Shame their seniority is still so low that they aren’t heard from until almost the end of the proceedings. But Katie Porter getting DeJoy to admit he had no idea of what it costs to mail a postcard — that was worth the wait :-)
laura
Kay
No one believes in Donald Trump like GOP strategists and the NYTimes political team believe in Donald Trump. The Pivot. Any day now.
He’s not gonna change. He’s bad all the way down. He couldn’t be better if he tried. It just isn’t in him. It’s like asking a cardboard box to be a turtle.
Spanky
@James E Powell: It’s not just their hate. They also have to be persecuted by those that they’re forced – FORCED, I tell you – to hate.
Jeffro
.
JaySinWA
@Kay: There’s an alternate explanation of the power Trump holds over most people that is not exactly extortion. It’s a form of corruption where he entices them to be part of a lie perhaps about something small, then things escalate as they try to keep hiding the lies that cascade from that. I believe Adam explained a version of that in an earlier post about how spies snare people.
Ken
Only trying to grant yourself a cool nickname, like “Buck,” and no one picks it up. Sob.
Kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
I love Katie Porter but this is one where the GOP defectors matter, and there are quite a few of them.
Ruining mail delivery turns out not to be politically popular. A stupid, clueless blunder by the Trump people.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Trump certainly didn’t think the man yelled “Spygate” because he reacted with a Northern bigot’s delight at his Southern brethren’s more forthright version of racism.
He said, “Only in North Carolina can you get away with that,” or something to that effect. He did the same thing when some yahoo in Florida screamed “shoot them!” when he mentioned undocumented immigrants in a speech: “Only in the Panhandle,” with an identical indulgent chuckle.
Kay
@Ken:
Ha! I forgot about that. That’s a little bit endearing though. It’s not mean.
They’re mean. Mean people. That’s why they’re unpopular.
Betty Cracker
@Flanders’ Other Neighbor: FYI, for some reason, using an apostrophe in your user name on this blog gets your comment hung up in moderation. Looks like nothing can be done about that weird technical glitch, so you might want to consider losing the apostrophe, The Other Neighbor of Flanders. ;-)
sdhays
@Delk: You should send Jerry an apology. How could you do this to him?
ETA:
// – Just in case it wasn’t completely obvious!
Jeffro
@Kay: it’s like their thought processes won’t allow them to stop, just for a half-second, and ask, “Have I ever seen Donald trumpov restrain himself from acting out for more than a day, or act the part of a moderately decent human being for more than an hour? No? Then perhaps I should quit acting like it’s a possibility, and come out and say so.”
Truly, a triumph of hope over experience (after experience after experience after experience)
germy
Kay
@JaySinWA:
I think fancy people let him into their orbit for years and they (rightfully) fear he will reveal their weaknesses. He’s like a hugely powerful, malicious gossip.
Fuck them. Why are they so stupid that they let him in? Again- poor judges of character. They should find better quality associates.
Jeffro
Minor point: if actual proof comes out that trumpov was blackmailing Falwell Jr for his initial endorsement/continued support…if Falwell cracks and throws trumpov under the bus…
…nah, what am I thinking? The evangelicals will just rag on Falwell Jr for trying to blame their Orange Idol. Never mind.
Adam L Silverman
@Delk: You and your partner know what you both did!//
More seriously, it is not and may you both have 21 more happy and healthy years together!
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: I took that comment as extremely encouraging, for the very reason that he can’t change and he’s not going to.
Noncarborundum
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have to say it sounds a lot more like “spygate” than “monkey” to me. The vowel of the second syllable seems to be a long a, which wouldn’t match up with “monkey”.
Ken
@germy: According to their public facade, the Falwells really should have been counseling that young man to cease his philandering ways and enter a stable monogamous relationship sanctified by marriage. Complaining that he’s making them jealous doesn’t really fit, does it?
Kent
@Betty Cracker: Maybe. But EVERY fucking evangelical leader and fundie was in the tank for Trump in 2016. Every damn one of them. I don’t think they ALL had pool boy scandals to hide. I highly doubt that Falwell was going to endorse Clinton except for the dirt they had on him.
Flanders Other Neighbor
@Betty Cracker: I just assumed you guys knew me well enough to keep a careful watch on me. Flanders also moved a couple of years ago, so maybe I should update my nym. Like crazy people other neighbor?
Kay
@Cheryl Rofer:
Is IS nice for us because it means they’ve given up on the presidency and are trying to save the senate.
Tom Levenson
@Citizen Alan: Obama was likely to win that one with or without the aid of the scandal.
I know that tastes differ, and one should not dispute, but I’m old enough to remember a general reaction of both “No, dude–don’t do that” and “Wait. Wut? You are married to 7 of 9, dude!”
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Melania talking trash about her husband? Missed that. Missed the bit about Eric taking the Fifth, too. Off I go to google….
Martin
The Atlantic has an article today reflecting some of my observations regarding higher ed.
His remedy is insufficient, though, IMO.
That isn’t breaking the business model, though. It’s just shoring up the subsidization model. And he says that privates are suffering form the same problem, and shoring up state budgets won’t change their situation either.
But if you look at what he’s pointing to as wasteful spending, it’s all spending toward reputation and not outcomes. Does Harvard provide a better education than Central Florida U? Maybe? But that’s only assumed because a washed up magazine says so and because one is harder to get into than the other. I can assure you, US News doesn’t know dick about education, even after all of these years, and give me 5 minutes and plenty of state funding and I’ll make my mid-tier public harder to get into than Harvard. It’ll be wildly unethical, but not illegal.
One of the biggest problems is that faculty are paid to stand in front of students for x hours over y week. That means that EVERYTHING needs to be structured to an x hours over y weeks format. So, our pandemic online teaching is x hours over y weeks. Ultimately, the university’s goal is ‘teach z students to this outcome’ but we never actually achieve that. We teach them to whatever outcome is possible in x hours over y weeks, grade them on how well they met that outcome, and then push them forward even if they only learned half of what they needed.
Instead, the university needs to fix the outcome. Pay faculty to ‘get z students to 100% mastery’. This shifts the burden from the student to the instructor because right now, there’s not a lot of incentive for the instructor to become a better instructor if all they really need to do is survive y weeks and be willing to hand out either low grades, or grades that bear no relationship to outcomes. But by shifting the outcomes from dependent to independent, that will force faculty to invest more in getting students to that outcome because it now becomes their time being wasted. Now you have an environment where faculty become broadly invested in improving instruction and getting some of the efficiency gains that those of us who participate in non-traditional learning enjoy to transfer to traditional learning. And it will force institutions to really consider the value of courses. We have loads of courses that exist because some instructor wanted a nice 20 student class to teach and convinced his/her colleagues to approve some fringe topic. Clearly these aren’t good value for the students because there is so little demand, but that never comes into play.
The basic problem with the university business model is that compensation relates to how many hours you are willing to stand in front of a room, and not how many students you are educating or the quality of that education. That was an easy mechanism 40 years ago, but it doesn’t apply today. So faculty are empowered to undo any efficiency gains we might make, because it maximizes their salary/effort ratio. And that is both unsustainable and impossible to fix internally.
ballerat
@Kay: Taking the hard parts out is what makes it appealing to the spiritually weak and the morally challenged.
I’ve never seen a bunch with less actual faith than evangelicals. They need reassurance in their faith all. the. time.
What was that admonition from jesus about not testing god? Not for these people! They make everything into a test.
That joke about god sending a boat, that’s a perfect encapsulation of these fundies. It has to be god, intervening. directly, miraculously. They simply can’t use common sense.
It’s why Trump’s insistence on a miracle saving them from covid resonates with them. The rest of us see it as obviously deadly foolishness. Just like in the boat joke.
sdhays
@Kent: He endorsed Dump before the Iowa caucuses. That was before he was the evangelical darling.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: Money laundering, tax fraud, their own affairs usually with their congregants, etc.
Kay
If we win this needs serious reform. They’re basically armed, publicly paid Republican operatives at this point and they’re lavishly funded. I don’t want to pay for this anymore.
Let’s do some deficit reduction! Elizabeth can put on her eyeshade and start lining thru :)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: @Flanders’ Other Neighbor: Or Flandersesesez Other Neighbor, to put it in Homer-eze
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
I don’t disagree with you at all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Calouste
@Martin: The whole university ranking is a farce, and heavily biased towards English- speaking countries. Germany and Japan have one university between them in the top 50, and Australia has three? Yeah, right.
Sebastian
@JaySinWA:
That is indeed possible, or a combination thereof.
But something got me thinking the other day when it was revealed that Trump is indeed a complete blustering idiot. It was also speculated a few times that Trump is The Devil, in its true mythical meaning. Hear me out.
I grew up in Europe with tons of legends, fables, stories, and fairy tales from the Middle Ages woven into the cultural fabric and the stories about pacts with the devil all follow the same plot:
Protagonist wants something really badly, meets devil who promises coveted thing in exchange for soul, protagonist is being tricked/devil does not deliver, eternal damnation ensues.
What if those are actual warnings about giving up integrity in exchange for a selfish goal? What if all those folks saw Trump being a gullible idiot they thought they could manipulate to get what they wanted and then their dignity and integrity vaporized (Dignity Wraith per Josh Marshal and ETTD by Rick Wilson)?
Brachiator
Yawn. If you give money to a church and don’t presume that the money is being misused, then you are doing it wrong.
Every now and then on a bored Sunday I would pop the channel to one of the evangelical programs being broadcast. It would always amaze me when the congregation would shout its approval and at minister brazenly bragging about the big house, big cars and private airplanes that the suckers’ money bought him. A very neat con to depict a pastor’s personal prosperity as proof of the prosperity of his or her ministry.
And it often looked as though mistresses and fuckboys, and soon to be mistresses and fuckboys, got preferential seating in the first row.
ETA: Another minister inserted a video of the family’s European vacation, with an obligatory side trip to the Holy Land into the televised program. The crowd ate it up.
Of course, every now and then a flock would get riled: “Hey, motherfucker, we agreed to buy you two cars, but not a whole goddam fleet. And we are paying for your house, but not your girl friend’s house as well.” But religious grift in America is some of the sweetest grift there ever was.
Geo Wilcox
Manafort did the same thing with his wife but she was not into it like Mrs. Falwell.
JaySinWA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Dick, whatever happened to the truth shall set you free?
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: As I tell everyone from the military I work with, when they ask about universities, my answer is always:
Martin
@Kent: They didn’t need to all have scandals. Only a few did, and those signaled to the rest and were motivated to recruit them.
Given that the scandal existed in the first place, these were individuals proven to be willing to sell out. So they could then be trusted to lie to their colleagues regarding Trump, to sell out their followers, and so on. And if you have a community of people that are almost as well defined by their ongoing gullibility than by their own self-identification, and a group of leaders willing to exploit that, well, yeah.
catclub
The wierdest thing is that Falwell contacted Micheal Cohen in 2011-2012 – since he was the guy who got you out of jams. How does that become known?
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. You’re buying access. Everyone needs to be clear about that.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
I did not get into Harvard or Yale. Thus, I ended up here.
Chris Johnson
@Adam L Silverman: How can this not be in line with Russians accumulating kompromat? It sounds like that was Trump’s main role, and that he loved his work. I’m sure Epstein loved his work too.
I’ve been saying it was exactly like this for months and there you go literally confirming it all like it ain’t no thing. Damn.
JaySinWA
@Baud: We are your safety school.
Ken
I must admit that the combined pizzagate / qanon child trafficking claims have had me worried, because of the general principle of “every accusation is a confession.”
RaflW
@PJ: I have assumed, throughout this Admin, that his wife has been a conduit of unrecorded, undisclosed communication between the Trump Admin and the Senate leader.
What Adam has said here today, I wonder now if it was also unrecorded, as I had very much assumed as a way to avoid consequences. But Trump may eventually have a Nixonian problem? One could hope!!
catclub
next thing you will be saying it is a selfish goal to play amazing blues guitar. …something something crossroads, midnight
Martin
@catclub: David Pecker. I’m guessing that now that Pecker is out at Natl Enquirer and guys like Cohen are out of the biz, there’s nobody left to protect and monetize the secrets. This might just be the first domino to fall.
It was basically an industry designed to turn shame into cash, held together by a bunch of different people, which the scrutiny of Trump as President has slowly but steadily exposed and destroyed. And it’s clear Trump was a big part of that empire. He was always willing to sell his affairs to the tabloids for a favor.
Baud
I just thank God we avoided having to deal with Clinton Fatigue.
Jay
@Geo Wilcox:
was Mrs. Fawell “into it”?
in a religion that preaches Male Dominion,?
Baud
@JaySinWA:
BJU! Go Fightin’ Jackals!
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think the core of it is that the fundangelicals are mostly an identity movement that wraps itself up in religious trappings. They really care about defining who is an insider and who is an outsider, and the religious stuff is just a bunch of shibboleths that serve to tell the two apart.
This is not to say that there aren’t true believers. I’m sure a lot of people genuinely believe everything their religious leader tells them and do their best to adhere to all the rules. But the people who don’t really care about all that stuff can still stay in the church while ignoring the rules as long as A) they don’t flaunt their disobedience and B) they make a public show of repentance if they’re caught.
zhena gogolia
Martin
@Ken: I’ve heard it suggested that it’s a bit more abstract than that. That it’s conservatives broadly that seek to control women and others. The border separation program is perilously close to a human trafficking operation as it is. So the conspiracies put Dems on defense where it would be fairly easy for them to be on offense.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jay:
Yeah, there’s an audio clip of a conversation. She acts like a lovesick high school sophomore, jealous of his other hookups.
Martin
@Jay: Sure. They don’t give a shit about the religion other than its ability to enrich them.
pamelabrown53
@Martin:
Yes!!! Which is why I think we need an updated blockbuster version of “Elmer Gantry” which I said below. Same story but way toxic.
catclub
It totally does not follow that Trump objects to using the term ‘spygate’ , so he says ‘lets be nice’
yeah, right.
Ken
She was always so overprepared.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Are we talking about a church or the Republican Party?
zhena gogolia
@Ken:
And I hear the New Yorker thinks the DNC went too smoothly.
God forbid we get any competence into our government.
Subsole
@Kay: As someone who spent a fair bit of time in those churches, it is not a faith in any strict sense.
Mostly it’s an excuse. Look at it as nothing but an excuse for people terrified to face themselves to indulge their worst selves and it makes sense.
The pluperfect hell of it is there are a great many decent and good people who fall into that shit and get twisted entirely sideways because there are NO OTHER SOCIAL NETS in their community.
zhena gogolia
Jay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
In BDSM there are high standards regarding “informed consent”.
The structural power inequality in an Evangelical marriage, violates the BDSM Informed Consent rules, and that’s with out all the Gaslighting.
In kink relationships that involve cuckolding, it’s the cuck who has the fetish of their partner having sex with other people, and often they are highly manipulative about getting their kink satisfied, and Manifort’s case, he was violent about it.
The cuck is never the victim, but that’s what Jerry is claiming he is.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: “Falwell’s trainer is married. So either his wife is involved in the affair or Falwell got his husband to cheat on her.”
Simpler explanation is that Falwell was in a relationship with the trainer between 2011-2016. In love, lust or was keeping Crosswhite quiet about something that happened when he was a Liberty student. No reason to assume that the only options have to involve either man’s wife.
Likewise the ‘racy photos.’ Falwell’s wife being involved doesn’t mean that’s the main thing that’s been hidden.
trollhattan
Miami Herald headline: “Pool service companies ‘inundated’ by flood of job applications”
Subsole
169 comments.
Nice.
zhena gogolia
Why does the RNC have to be this week? I’m not watching it, but all the fallout + Falwell + USPS + Kellyanne C. + there’s something about Ivanka?
I need to work, dammit! I keep saying that.
BruceFromOhio
@Brachiator:
A church is a building. The Republican Party is a cult. There’s a difference.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Ha!
Another Scott
A few thoughts:
If this dumpster fire helps the scales to fall from the eyes of people who pay attention to him – fine. Otherwise, I’ll probably do my best to ignore it.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“… let’s tax religion!!” – Jello Biafra)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Yup.
Subsole
@Spinoza Is My Co-pilot: This.
I know a lot of pastors who are gonna be mighty shocked when that millstone goes ’round their necks.
Ken
@zhena gogolia: And they’re all singing along, with no masks. If any one of their tests was a false negative, they are in a world of trouble.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Neither did Joe Biden.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: What do you think Joe’s nym is?
Subsole
@PJ: This is also a big part of it.
Evangelicalism is the toxic distillate of sola fide boiled down to jagged crystalized poison.
JPL
Jerry Falwell Jr. resigned from Liberty University. Wow, I didn’t expect that.
BruceFromOhio
@GregMulka: http://www.wetriffs.com is still available.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, there’d probably be a ramp involved.
taumaturgo
catclub
There was a time when the Episcopal Church was referred to as ‘the Republican party at prayer’. Now, not so much. waaaay too liberal.
Another Scott
@JPL: He took an “indefinite leave of absence” on August 7, so them kicking him out was the next logical step.
It’s the first step in his rehabilitation, also too. And one has to expect that’s in the cards…
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@JaySinWA:
I think there’s something else closely tied up with this: Trump gives people license to their inner corruption. Trump himself lacks a normal capacity for shame* and guilt, and that’s an incredible draw to people who are inwardly corrupt but are blocked from acting by their own shame and guilt. He shows them they can do as they’ve always wanted without negative consequences, and that’s hugely liberating. They fall in love with freedom from guilt, and they don’t want to give it up.
*Trump lacks an inner capacity for shame but can be made to feel bad by other people’s disapproval.
Ken
Michael Steele just joined the Lincoln Project.
I wonder if every day of the RNC will be packed with this much news?
Martin
It’s funny that one of the main motivations for the Protestant reformation was the expression that the individuals who held the control of the Catholic church were too often charlatans – that they were effectively actors playing the role the congregation wanted when they were looking, and doing what they wanted when they weren’t. And now the Evangelicals create the very same system for themselves, led by these actors that know what lines to say to appease the masses and grow their congregations, but then run off and do the exact opposite.
I think that’s the GOPs big objection to Hollywood. Real actors get to leave the set and be their real selves. Nobody expects Jack Gleeson IRL to be the piece of shit that he portrayed on screen, but the GOP never get to do that themselves. There are consequences if they don’t stay in character.
catclub
But I bet they are still paying him. And his severance payment will be large, too.
Subsole
@RedDirtGirl: Yep. They call it being “under the Blood”, as in the precious blood of Jesus Christ who died for your sins. As long as you accept Him, he will intercede on your behalf at the Judgement, basically. No matter what you do.
It basically is just taking the incredibly toxic idea that only the next world matters to its logical (?) conclusion.
Ken
Gassing one of its pastors for a photo-op was also a misstep.
lgerard
@Kay:
This reminds me of trump’s eary rallies. Whenever the crowd started chanting USA USA USA! he tried to get them to change it by telling them to chant trump trump trump!.
Nobody bought it and he eventually gave up.
A Ghost to Most
Forget it, Jake. It’s christians.
Martin
@catclub: Depends on where the liability falls. If they keep paying him when it becomes increasingly clear that he embezzled from the institution, then they will get caught up as well.
The big stick for institutional behavior is access to federal financial aid. A Biden/Harris administration is not going to allow a university to hide wrongdoing by its president and still retain that access.
Falwell better have a lot on the university for them to risk that.
MattF
@catclub: Possibly, but possibly not. Severance payment contract could well have a ‘moral turpitude’ clause.
Martin
@Ken: Only if they had already made most of that journey beforehand. Pretty sure Trump could have killed Falwell Jr in an airstrike and the evangelicals would have bent over backward defending Trump arguing someone screwed up, or deep state, or some bullshit.
James E Powell
@Adam L Silverman:
Some years ago I had a talk using almost your exact words with a student. I talked him into going to Duke over UCLA. It wasn’t Harvard or Yale, but it pretty much worked out the same.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: It really does depend on what one thinks a college education should provide. Is it mastery of a set of knowledge and thinking skills within a broadly defined academic discipline? Or is it learning the skills necessary to be a good citizen and be a good guest at cocktail parties? J. D. Vance and his whole schtick about showing up at Yale Law and not being able to function has some validity. I can say I left my undergrad a far more cosmopolitan and sophisticated person than I was when I began. A lot of that came from interactions with classmates, etc., that would not have happened at a different type of school.
sdhays
Why is the plan for Dump to violate the Hatch Act like it’s an American flag by giving his speech(es?) from the Rose Garden when he has no problem speaking live at the convention? And he would obviously prefer being in front of all the people. Are they worried that by Thursday it’s going to be COVID central?
catclub
@Ken: Because the Episcopal church is old and owns the best real estate – like across from the white house.
Ken
@sdhays: “Plan”? Assumes facts not in evidence. I will not be surprised if, having got his fix of delegates yelling random slurs, he decides to keep everyone in NC and give all his speeches there.
Sister Golden Bear
@JaySinWA: Practice makes pervert.
Morzer
@Fraud Guy: Calvin’s theology on this point ultimately goes back to a reading of Augustine of Hippo (who may, whisper it softly, just possibly have been influenced by his time as a Manichee…).
sdhays
@Ken: The Episcopal Church also went through a split, with the more conservative factions becoming the Anglican Church. This happened over the Episcopal Church’s welcoming stand towards gay marriage.
So Episcopal now means “the liberal part” of the old Episcopal church.
KenK
@CliosFanBoy: I may need to trust, but verify
sdhays
@Ken: They’ve stated that that’s what they’re going to do, so it is “the plan”, but you’re absolutely right that it’s not going to happen that way until it actually happens. I just don’t understand why they’ve bothered when he’d clearly be happier in Charlotte and he’s going there anyway.
Morzer
@JaySinWA: Jackalwarts
japa21
@sdhays: It occurs to me that by broadcasting his speech(es) from the WH grounds that the networks would be aiding and abetting a crime.
dmsilev
@sdhays: It’s to prove that he can. No “Hatch Act” is going to constrain him. He does what he wants.
Ken
Huh. Derek Lowe has turned off comments for his post on convalescent plasma. He has had problems with covid articles – people still pushing hydroxychloroquine (“plus zinc!”) show up regularly – but I think this is the first time he’s ever disabled comments.
(Spoiler: Plasma is likely to have some benefits, but there hasn’t been nearly enough study to determine how much, or the best way to use it. And monoclonal antibodies already in development would be superior in every way, since they’re the pure form of what you want from the plasma.)
sdhays
@japa21: They most definitely are.
@dmsilev: That’s the only explanation I can come up with too.
StringOnAStick
@Jay: The transgressiveness of what they’ve been doing adds to the hotness, especially for this type of God botherer.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: As they say, why not both? I am sure I would have learned more, as in book learnin’, in college had I gone later in life and been more focused on studies instead of extracurricular activities, but college was also an important part of my becoming a (semi-)functioning adult.
Kay
Check back Thursday for the presidential President. The contrast.
patroclus
The Hatch Act, by its very terms, does not apply to Trump (or Pence). It does, however, apply to everyone else who works at the WH.
I’m sorry, but my gaydar is way up after looking at pics of Granda and the Miami Beach Hostel he runs has been described as “very gay-friendly.” I think more happened between Falwell and Granda than just Falwell watching. Maybe it’s because I’m gay and have an imagination (or maybe, as someone said above, it’s just because a “friend” told me this).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sdhays: The President isn’t covered by the Hatch Act.
Taken4Granite
209 comments in and nobody has posted this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-rfCnW5VlE
Just as fitting today as when they recorded the song a couple of decades ago.
Baud
@Kay: Called it.
trnc
@Ian R:
@germy: For any imaginable fetish:
Someone isare into itMattF
@Ken: I suspect trolls found his blog. He had a post on the Russian vaccine that attracted some trolling, so he’s gotten wiser. He has an actual job after all, and can’t spend all day cleaning up.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Weirdest things about this story:
Do you live in Brigadoon, CT, by any chance?
Morzer
@Kay: So Thursday is going to be Sedated Moron Bumbles Through Unconvincing Teleprompted Speech Day?
Geminid
@catclub: A couple month’s ago Liberty University “re-opened” it’s student residences, and students and parents complained the this was a pretext for refusing to rebate room and board charges. I looked up Falwell’s net worth. One estimate was $100 million.
sdhays
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Somehow I think they’ll find a way to violate it up and down and round and round regardless of the carveouts for Dump and Dense.
Either way, it’s deeply inappropriate and the only reason they’re doing it is for deeply inappropriate reasons. They’re not even pretending like it’s to keep Dump himself safe.
StringOnAStick
@Ken: There’s also the issue of lung damage caused by receiving plasma; it was a doctor’s tweet that was in this morning’s Covid summary post. Too many people think medicine is exactly like TV shows.
I checked into my spam folder yesterday and somehow I was on some RW nutter’s newsletter subscription list from Superior, CO. I scanned the titles; the first was how the FDA was murdering people by not allowing unfettered use of hydrodynamic blah blah blah, others were all deep state this and that. When my husband laments that he just can’t understand these people I always point out that they have their own closed media and thought universe that is extremely reinforced and redundant.
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It sounded like “Spygate” to me.
cain
@JPL:
He’ll be back – repentence and all that – then he’ll be back in full form. I understand that everyone was afraid of his wife more than him.
Morzer
Interesting little bit of news involving Covidia, latest WINO of Donald:
https://yashar.substack.com/p/scoop-melania-trumps-comments-about
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: All colleges need to do the first. The question is, in my mind, is that it?
trnc
@SiubhanDuinne: Did anyone ask him to explain how he expects the removal of mail sorting machines would help achieve the goal of on-time mail truck departure? That would seem to be a pretty basic question, but I haven’t yet seen any mention of a question like that.
Kent
@Adam L Silverman: We really need some more threads about the future of higher education. There are so many folks here with inside knowledge and a bunch of the rest of is around the fringes with kids in or going to college, or teaching.
The fundamental problem in my mind is that colleges are even searching for a business model in the first place. That is the main fallacy. I teach at a public HS. No one talks about business models for public K-12 education unless they are in the tank fraudster charter school types.
cain
@Another Scott:
The separation of church and state is primarily to protect religion. Religion is all about your soul and metaphysical aspects – politics is the complete opposite – it is matters of Man, money, and of course power. Affairs of men will definitely corrupt religion.
It’s why you should probably have a vow of poverty if you want to be any kind of spiritual leader. That will draw off these assholes who want to use religion as a grift.
Tim C.
@catclub: ELCA Lutherans too.
Ruckus
@Spanky:
If he gets beaten, and he should, like a rented mule as the old saying goes, all the people that were supposed to help him, keep him in office, keep him from being arrested, tried and convicted, all of them will have failed him. And he will give them no help whatsoever. His attention span, his “thought process,” only goes one way, his way. It’s why so many are totally behind him, everything in shitforbrains world only go one way, to him. He gives nothing away, he sells everything he does for someone. And if he’s thrown out on his ass, it of course won’t be his fault, it’s the fault of everyone that didn’t support him 12000%. 11999% isn’t enough, which is a small problem for all his supporters who expect quid pro quo. In shitforbrains world, everyone else is all on their own. He’s managed his entire life to grift at a high level without being arrested, he’s not stopping giving up everyone/anyone else to save his ass now.
Subsole
@Baud: I’m sure they rue their hidebound “Pants are not a fashion accessory, Baud” stance even today.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I can’t say how much I despise those US News rankings, not just for schools but for other institutions. They’re just throwing some meansurments together with no real justification for why they chose the ones they did or weighted them the way they did. Worst of all, they put way too much weight on reputation, both explicitly with their reputation scores and implicitly with things like student rejection rate. The net result is that they usually tell people what they already believed rather than finding unheralded innovators. And their scores are influential enough that the institutions they’re rating change their policies to try to boost their scores regardless of whether it is a useful investment outside of the desire to look good in the US News rankings. It’s just a terrible way of doing things.
Subsole
@Ken: We are going to be nauseated by what falls out of Betsy DeVos’s closets.
lgerard
@patroclus:
Falwell’s son “Trey” was part of that puzzle as well, though I don’t really want to look too closely at how the pieces fit together
Jay
@StringOnAStick:
Kinks and Fetishes are usually formed in early childhood in a prepuberty sexual experience. Usually nothing more than an early experience of arousal. For many, they are concealed out of shame.
A very common Dan Savage letter is a “straight vanilla” trying to deal with their partner, several years into the relationship, revealing their kink, manipulating the partner into participating, then becoming obsessive about it.
People with kinks, fetishes, BDSM, etc, need to have partners who are open, adventurous, joyful, open to experimentation and loving.
Probably not a wife your Dad arranged for you at Liberty U.
Subsole
@catclub:
“You done sold yer ‘mortal soul to play gittar?”
“I weren’t usin’ it fer nuthin’ else.”
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Yes.
Searcher
@lgerard:
Well that’s just pitiful. Everyone knows that a good chant needs three* syllables to be chantable, and “Don!ald! Trump!” is right there.
* You can sometimes work with more but less is much harder.
Geminid
@Geminid: I am hoping that some of the Fallwell scandal will wash into the contest for the 5th Va Congressional seat. The republican candidate, self-described “Biblical Conservative” Bob Good, worked as a fundraising official for Liberty University until a few months ago. Ironically, his campaign fundraising lags well behind that of Democratic opponent Cameron Webb. In 2018 the sitting Congressman, Denver Riggleman, beat a lacklustre Democrat by seven points. But Good knocked Riggleman out in a district convention held in the parking lot of Good’s megachurch. Riggleman wasn’t conservative enough.
Kilgore Trout
@Kent: I think the endorsement in question right now was for the primaries – apparently Ted Cruz thought he had it in the bag right up to the time of the announcement.
Chyron HR
@Kay:
“I will gladly be president Thursday for a hamberder today.”
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nor Kamala Harris.
Subsole
@zhena gogolia:
“Vice-president Buchanan, why were you never married?”
Another Scott
@Kent: Made me look… https://www.educationnext.org/the-business-model/
We have a Grade School Productivity Gap!!11ONE
:-/
I think Manhattan Institute Senior Fellows have a bit of a constructing a logical argument gap, myself.
As Kay (I believe) has mentioned, government services, and goods and services provided for public benefit like schools, are not businesses. That’s not their job. Trying to shoe-horn them into business boxes is a category error. (For one thing, businesses do not and cannot serve everyone.)
Cheers,
Scott.
cain
@Jeffro:
Full waterworks – and then claim that Trump is really the devil – and how the man lead him down a dark path. These assholes will protect their own because I’m sure Falwell knows secrets too.
He will take them down with him – or they will pay him off, or they will let him come back in after a period of being contrite.
Ken
Coco Chanel said before leaving the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off. She didn’t limit it to accessories.
WaterGirl
Subaru Diane:
Two ways to color text.
Ruckus
@Baud:
I did not even apply to Harvard or Yale and I’m here.
I was tangentially related to someone who taught at CalTech and MIT though, if that gets me anything……
Martin
@Kent: Universities are tasked with a wide array of often competing things. Most public hospitals are run by universities for instance, so we’re navigating all of the politics around healthcare, and we can’t allow the hospital to bankrupt the rest of the institution. Should it be this way? Maybe not.
We are also the nations research engine. That’s compatible with part of the educational task, and incompatible with other parts.
We also do a LOT of for-fee service. We run transportation systems for our county, and stuff like that. That’s supporting the educational mission financially, but it’s not necessarily efficient in terms of overlap with other efforts.
And none of that considers sports and other economic activities.
If society insists on delegating these things to us, we can’t exactly turn them away when they are the only reliable income stream we have. I think the average UC gets 11% revenue from the state. 89% is generated elsewhere.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl: Working on it. I’ll post something in colour in a later thread. Thanks very much.
Barbara
@Jay: You think people not open to (or just not really feeling the need to try) those things are not joyful and loving? That seems like quite the leap in judgment.
RaflW
@zhena gogolia: And I hear the New Yorker thinks the DNC went too smoothly.
I mean, you can see now that they kinda have a point: The DNC didn’t produce nearly the page views or titillation-clicks of Bannon, Kellyanne and Jerry.
Immanentize
@Geminid:
Bob Good is a jackass.
That is my comment.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
lol
I can’t believe I admitted on BJ that I subscribe to TV Guide.
But the really exciting news is that my copy of Penny Press Variety Puzzles arrived today too. True story.
cain
it’s all about blind faith – so focused on making sure you can get into the after life – you’re willing to compromise everything by following leaders who lead you to perdition instead.
Kent
@Kilgore Trout: Maybe so. I just don’t buy the notion that Falwell was in any way instrumental in Trumps rise or success. He basically lead the field from beginning to end in the primaries. My people, for example, who are conservative Mennonites so fundamentalist but not evangelical, were behind Trump early on and they have nothing to do with Falwell and that world. I have a ton of Mennonite relatives who were big MAGA folk. Your basic rural farmer types from PA, MI, IN, etc. The like the alpha male thing and Cruz just didn’t have it. Neither did Walker or some of the other evangelical candidates like Santorum. GWB had it though.
Patricia Kayden
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I always type my thing first and then color, so if my instructions in #2 aren’t clear, it’s because I will have left out a step. :-)
To test stuff, i usually go back to a thread from the previous day where no one else is around.
Anya
@Adam L Silverman: Trump is so loathsome. Is there any moral and ethical line he didn’t obliterate?
Martin
@Another Scott: It’s not that we have a grade school productivity gap. It’s that we have an ill-defined set of goals for grade school, and therefore an ill-defined set of goals for teachers and administrators. And because of this, there’s no way for teachers to push for improvements to teaching because there’s really no accepted standard for results.
What’s the most important activity in any elementary school? It’s attendance. Because that’s what money is attached to and principals can’t hire teachers and pay for resources without money. What’s the most important activity in high schools? Standardized testing for the same reasons.
We are admitting students that are better and better at standardized testing and worse and worse at critical thinking because Goodhart’s Law is universal. So it looks like our students are more and more qualified while our experience is that they aren’t.
Designing policies that don’t reward the wrong thing is hard because people take their own interests into account when interpreting the policy. You have to assume that the interpreters of the policy will be more clever in achieving their goals than you are as policymaker in steering them toward yours.
cain
@WaterGirl:
A good way to get people to notice you too!
cain
@Anya:
He can do whatever he wants as long as it outrages the liberals.
zhena gogolia
I know I’m like a broken record with this guy, but he is turning out the best comedy for the moment:
gwangung
@Adam L Silverman: That’s precisely the use of an Ivy League education, or quasi-Ivy. Speaking from experience.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: I work without a net!
Juju
@germy: Oh. Hotwifing, not hotwifiing. That makes mores sense.
Aleta
@patroclus: Oh absolutely. Shifting the attention to the wife is shifty. In at least some fundamentalist churches, a gay husband is defined as a “homosexual struggle in the marriage” and the wife is told she’s responsible. Pastoral counseling instructs her to stay in the marriage and make changes in herself (it’s the same if he’s beating her or abusing children or stealing money). His assignment is intensive prayer sessions with church heads. She must continue to obey the husband in all things.
Barry
@MattF: “And, yeah, ‘cuck’ is the all-purpose RW insult. Yet another entertaining diorama for the Museum of Psychopathology.”
If you assume Freudian Projection on the right, you will rarely be wrong.
Brachiator
@cain:
But religious grift in America is some of the sweetest grift there ever was.
No, this is about stupidity. It is ridiculous that followers of any group think it OK that their “leader” live fabulously better than they do.
Calouste
So Falwell said he lost 80 pounds because he was worrying about his wife’s affair. Or it could be that he hit the diet pills because he didn’t get a lot of swinging action being 80 pounds overweight.
Another Scott
@Martin: I think that, in general, the over-arching goals for public schools are well articulated and well understood and have been for a long time (going back to Jefferson).
The problems with public education are mostly problems of the communities they serve, unequal funding depending on the zip code, and lack of funding in general. Kids pick up on what the community thinks is important by looking around their schools. E.g. when they see they’re in crumbling buildings built in the 1930s, they don’t take comments about things like a world class education for everyone seriously.
It’s not a problem of “productivity” or “funding per pupil has gone up X times compared to 1960 but scores haven’t changed” and the like.
I agree that metrics are an important part of figuring out how well any system is doing. But bad metrics aren’t just bad and a waste of time, they’re dangerous. As you say, people end up working to improve the metrics even if that doesn’t improve education. We’ve all heard the stories of teachers changing scores on standardized tests and the like. America has been pretty good at avoiding the tragedies of “5 Year Plans” and “Great Leap Forward” and the like…
I don’t know the answers. I admire your efforts to try to make things better in your part of the huge system. And every system can and must be improved and change as the world changes. And change is hard. (“If it were easy, it would have been done already.”) But I’d be much happier listening to education reformers like Diane Ravitch and maybe the late Sir Ken Robinson than old white guys from business schools and think tanks who apparently think that Chainsaw Al Dunlap is the leader to emulate.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@trnc: With less sorting there is less mail, so they can take the truck out on time – because they aren’t delivering a lot of the mail.
MoxieM
@sdhays: So, no more God’s Frozen People? (What do I know, I’m a lifetime UU. No kinks please, it’s all out in the open.) Actually, I learned there is a thing, even in the U-U establishment, called an “after Pastor”. It’s the clean up minister you bring in after a scandal (sexual scandal being implied.) So really it’s built in to the system that it’s gonna happen.
James E Powell
@Kay:
I really need someone from our side to bring this up on the air. Just ask, “Why do you do that? Trump has never been presidential. Why do you promote the idea that he is going to be anything different or anything better than he has been?”
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I love that hot pink is your color.
James E Powell
Chris Paul in his post-game didn’t want to talk about anything except Jacob Blake, the man shot by police in Kenosha. The reporter kept trying to steer him back to the game his team had just won, but he came right back with (paraphrase) Sports is fine but there’s things going on that are more important. Everybody vote. I’m calling on everyone to vote.
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
I think you’re misreading him. He’s saying that people who have non-standard sexual interests need support from partners who are going to be supportive of their sexual needs, and they’re unlikely to get that if their partner was raised in a prudish religious background.
Geminid
@cain: Baptists used to have a fairly strong tradition of separation of Chuch and State. But they traded that birthright for so much political pottage.
zhena gogolia
Barbara
@Roger Moore: He said:
It’s just a blog, and I am sure it was typed in haste, but it speaks for itself, and I don’t think I was misreading the implication.
patrick II
@Roger Moore:
Fundamentalism gives an unearned authority to people who have not earned it.
zhena gogolia
Paul Rudnick is having a field day with today’s pool boy news.
zhena gogolia
@Barbara:
I don’t think that quotation means that other people can’t also be adventurous and loving.
Barbara
@zhena gogolia: Let’s hope not. I guess my point is that wherever you fall on the spectrum of expression in this arena, it almost always helps to have a joyful and loving partner.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: Blue is my color(Go Bruins!), hot pink just stands out.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
C’mon,y0u’ve got to be trolling us now! The crossword is like a 10-by-10 grid with clues like “Furry alien” (ALF).
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
One important thing to realize is that there is apparently a huge placebo effect (or whatever you call the equivalent in this kind of thing) in studies of effective teaching. It seems as if it’s the training, and possibly the idea the teachers are doing something innovative and exciting, that makes the difference rather than the specifics of the teaching strategy. If you come up with almost any halfway reasonable educational reform and train a group of teachers in it, they’ll have better outcomes than an equivalent group of teachers who didn’t get the same training.
This makes it really hard to figure out what works, because all kinds of things work in studies. Maybe this means teachers get bored teaching the same stuff year after year and need a shakeup once in a while to get out of a rut. Maybe it means teachers just need more training and support. It almost certainly means we need to change the way we study educational reforms.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: I used to work in a building* whose internal company designation was ALF.
*The building would be familiar to anyone who watched “LA Law”.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
@Barbara:
You think people not open to (or just not really feeling the need to try) those things are not joyful and loving?
I tend to have a very poor opinion of organized religion (probably disorganized religion as well). But desire is very volatile and often reactions are not related in any single or simple way to how “prudish” a person’s religious background might be.
And ministers and congregations are often as freaky as it is possible to be. The issue is how best to actualize the freaky with care and respect.
Jay
@Barbara:
it’s Dan’s terms, you have to be all of those things, not just two.
It’s not a judgement, it’s a list of qualities a Fetishist or someone into Kink, needs at a minimum, in a partner, to have a chance at a successful relationship, and it’s a list they also have to have themselves.
Someone who has a kink or a fetish, needs to have a partner willing to “go there” some of the time with them or approve of them going outside the relationship for fulfilment some of the time.
At the same time the person with the kink or fetish, either has to be wholeheartedly be willing to not “go there” all the time, unless their partner is fully onboard with the kink or fetish.
Because many people find their kink or fetish shameful or abnormal, they often go for relationships with the most “vanilla” partners they can find, as a means of “staying closeted”.
Even today, with the Internet, finding a “perfect” kink or fetish match online, is like finding Sasquatch. I know people who travelled the world to find their perfect kink or fetish partner, only to have the relationship blow up, because it wasn’t “perfect”.
Brachiator
@patrick II:
Good point. And from the beginning there were branches of radical Protestantism that asserted that no single human being could ever be an authority over other believers.
The Moar You Know
There’s going to be more and it’s going to be horrifying. Think about it.
The hotwife/beta cuck action is what they are willing to admit to with virtually no prompting. They coulda litigated poolboy until Doomsday and used the courts to keep his mouth shut. They didn’t. And they’re not going to litigate the inevitable (within a week) story about the personal trainer and Jerry, either.
Because this is just the cover for something way, way worse. I don’t know what. But I do know that rich people don’t immediately confess to shit that will ruin their lives, and more important, their income stream, unless they’re doing so to cover up something even worse.
Aleta
@Martin: It’s true that a famous school isn’t automatically the best choice, might be the wrong choice, and that other schools offer great opportunities; but false to reduce any school to ‘paying for connections’ and nothing more. Not everyone who goes to an Ivy ends up with connections and open doors, by a long shot. Many of the students who leave with that arrived with it, though in simpler form. And you can’t generalize a universal truth about what students receive from an education at Yale or Harvard; as with anywhere, much depends on the department and all kinds of other things, including luck. There’s luck in meeting someone who inspires or helps you and in chance opportunities you engage with or don’t. Relationships with individual professors or classmates are affected by race, gender, class, group behavior, charisma …. .
Barbara
@Jay: Most people want love and joy, but not everyone wants adventure. Love and joy also help you through boredom and other not so perfect things that arise during the course of a relationship. Their correlation with BDSM proclivities is no more and no less likely than with any other proclivities. My only point.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
Or use “Flanders*s Other Neighbor,” which is what it should be anyway, since “Flanders” is not a plural. Hmmph.
The “glitch” comes in because of the way that FYWP’s underlying database, SQL, handles text strings. The strings can be delimited by single or double quotes. So dealing with an apostrophe (possible single quote) within a nym requires some special handling, which, as usual, FYWP is not up to.
Also as usual, XKCD has a (somewhat) relevant cartoon.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: Relatedly, …
https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/
Being too clever by half is often a bad thing. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Man, this is a hot topic!
Excellent focus on two issues which are important to the educational establishment, but irrelevant to the actual education of students.
And yet, I have seen teachers (mainly in California) rightly resist standardized testing but also refuse to co-operate in any attempt to gauge teacher effectiveness and to devise methods to improve education, especially in schools where students are failing.
And worse, at times education can be a racket where good teachers and administrators refuse to hold poor teachers accountable. Worst of all are teachers and administrators who hold parents in contempt and yet expect parents to come to their support.
Also, I note that there are aspects of great education that cannot be easily quantified or reduced to a number or a score.
Much standardized testing measures nothing significant. And there are teachers who probably should just stick to teaching their subjects well, rather than trying to develop critical thinking in their students, a task which is sometimes beyond their talents.
Jinchi
Because you want blue shutters, of course.
But actually, I don’t think you guys have this quite right. It’s the elite that are exempted from the rules. The lower rank members are all subject to severe repurcussions for violating them.
prostratedragon
Niccolò Paganini – Caprice for Solo Violin, Op. 1 No. 24
Another Scott
@Brachiator:
It mostly measures a student’s ability to take standardized tests.
Seriously.
If it measured intrinsic knowledge and understanding, then people wouldn’t do things like take the SAT multiple times to improve their scores.
My brilliant J has a favorite story about her time in grade school in one of those “experimental” schools where kids pretty much did what they wanted and they all had a great time with no grades, no tests, etc., yet they still learned a lot. Later, her twin sister was valedictorian of their high school (J got one “B” on purpose so that she wouldn’t have to compete with her over it), so they did well in traditional classes as well.
How many high-stakes multiple choice tests do we take after we get out of formal schooling? Maybe it’s not really that important a skill, but instead has been built-up because “we” don’t trust teachers enough to evaluate student performance?
We already know there are better ways.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@Tom Levenson: Maybe, but I know it was a lot easier for Obama to beat deranged lunatic Alan Keyes compared to pre sex scandal Jack Ryan.
Martin
The burden is on Harvard or Yale or anyone else to demonstrate the value of the service they are offering. None do that. In fact, we go out of our way to never do that. Our focus is entirely on our reputation, not on what a student will necessarily learn.
That means students don’t actually know what they’re buying. It is the best educational experience? Very possibly. But Harvard has no interest in actually demonstrating that. What they do demonstrate that cannot be denied is access. Can every student benefit from that? Well, no, but does anyone think that Central Florida University offers remotely the same kind of access as Harvard? One of my early contracting jobs was at a small firm that it turns out was made up of USC grads. They were hiring a new permanent employee and they started by throwing every non-USC resume in the garbage. They understood that the value of their degree relied on raising the reputation of the school by hiring future graduates.
Every student experience is unique, but some provide more opportunities and others fewer. You’re buying the likelihood of opportunity.
You think Kavanaugh would have been sitting in front of the Senate if his parents hadn’t gotten him into Georgetown? Why do you think Ted Cruz refused to study with students who went to lesser reputation schools? Everyone knows this game. Everyone plays it, and nobody wants to admit to it.
Go to any top 50 university and see if you can find a faculty member that will admit having gone to a community college. You won’t. Lots did, but none will admit to it, because it undermines their reputation by suggesting they couldn’t get into a ‘better’ school.
geg6
@Martin:
We get a whopping 8% of our budget from PA.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
I even do the People crossword.
Martin
@Another Scott: Somewhat. More than that it either tests the teachers ability to prepare students for standardized tests, or the students ability to hire people to help him/her take the standardized test.
Standardized tests correlate better with income than with anything else.
WaterGirl
@James E Powell: That’s heartening!
Bex
@sdhays: The largest group of splitters became the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). The Anglican Church usually refers to the Church of England.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Whoa!
Let’s see how the Dumpster Fire likes threats – he certainly liked issuing them in relation to the ambassador who was going to have some bad things happening to he.
I hope she reads that quote from Michael Cohen and experiences at least a moment of satisfaction.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: “I suppose having the intro to your next OTR in hot pink would be too much”, she pondered deviously.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Have I ever told you the story of when I worked the University? We had an open office arrangement because we did IT support and nobody wanted cubicles anyway
Someone stopped by our office and was chatting, and asked what my favorite color was. I paused and said, you know, I’m not sure.
Every single person who worked for me and was in the office at that moment shouted BLUE! simultaneously. YOUR FAVORITE COLOR IS BLUE. How can you not know that? Look at the color we painted the office, the colors on the walls of your house, the color that’s in all the artwork on the walls…
Maybe you had to be there, but it was pretty funny.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: :-D
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
There’s more to it than not trusting teachers to evaluate their students. The big benefit of standardized testing is that it’s standardized, so at least in theory you can compare the scores of students from anywhere. That generality has real value, even if it comes with major drawbacks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: I don’t think hot pink would reflect the subject matter. It’s a volcano and foo dogs.
germy
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
I have been working my way through the entire back catalogue of NYT crosswords (going back to November 1993). I am up to October 2010 and am already dreading the day when I catch up to “real time” and face rationing.
Ken
@Steeplejack: Unless your memory is a hell of lot better than mine, just start over with the 1993 puzzles.
Another Scott
Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode of …
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Calouste
@The Moar You Know: The only thing Falwell has admitted to so far is that his wife had an affair with the pool boy. He hasn’t admitted to anything regarding himself. The pool boy has some other allegations with receipts, but Falwell denies them. So far.
Immanentize
@Aleta: +1
Yutsano
@Calouste: There’s some bisexuality in there. That would be the one thing Falwell would definitely want to hide more than anything.
PJ
@Calouste: The pool boy apparently released video. It’s gonna be hard for Falwell to hide that.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
Wow. How do you access those? I would love to do some vintage NYT.
James E Powell
@Citizen Alan:
Both Jack and Jeri Ryan opposed the unsealing of their divorce file. It was the Chicago Tribune and Chicago TV station that sued.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: Agreed that in theory it has value. I think that we’re coming to see that the serious issues with the tests outweigh that value in lots of cases.
To be clear, I’m a big fan of basic national standards – in principle. I think it’s probably more important for public schools to challenge students to do well, to learn how to learn, and find ways to help them do well. I see the value in testing, but the recent mania for high-stakes testing is misguided.
https://dianeravitch.net/2020/08/22/biden-and-harris-may-forge-a-new-path-on-education/
It’ll be interesting to see who Biden picks for Secretary of Education and what they end up pushing.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
Cheers,
Scott.
ballerat
@Roger Moore: He really is like Old Scratch, isn’t he?
I’m intrigued by the idea of the Antichrist as an idiot stupid dotard. It’s like the power of the demons/spirits in Bird Box; they don’t actually kill anyone, their effect is to cause people to kill themselves.
Their downfall in other words is within themselves.
dopey-o
I have been interested in the idea that Trump is the Anti-Christ, but none of his followers can see it. He has embraced all of the 7 deadly sins, and his followers embrace him for the audacity of his belligerence.
Of course the unchurched Trump has no idea of his role. Christ said “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Hatred, neo-nazis marching in the streets, children stolen and locked in cages, 177,000 excess deaths, 30 million jobs lost, 100,000 small businesses gone forever, and it’s late and i can’t remember what else.
People ask “What would he do differently if he really was a Russian asset?” What if he really was the Anti-Christ?