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You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Saturday Night Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: It Went to Jared

Saturday Night Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: It Went to Jared

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American Made Media Consultants, for extra risibility. Bess Levin is always a good read:

Donald Trump and his family have spent the last four years making the airtight case that they view the presidency as simply a means to enrich themselves and their associates. They probably don’t particularly like that reputation and, yet, it hasn’t stopped them from funneling taxpayer money to their private business, gouging the Secret Service, and raising legal defense funds that the fine print says could go directly to their pockets. Oh, and, according to a new report, setting up a shell company that spent hundreds of millions of campaign dollars to pay Trump family members along with other expenditures it seemingly wanted to keep under wraps.

According to Business Insider, first son-in-law Jared Kushner personally approved the creation of the company, incorporated as American Made Media Consultants Corp. and American Made Media Consultants LLC, in April 2018. From there, Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump, was named president, with Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence serving as vice president. If you’re wondering why the shell company, described as Business Insider as acting “almost like a campaign within a campaign” was necessary, well, it’s not entirely clear, but it sure sounds like the express purpose was the ability to shield “financial and operational details from public scrutiny,” as it allowed the campaign to avoid federally mandated disclosures concerning what it was spending considerable amounts of money on. And by considerable we mean nearly half of the $1.26 billion raised for Trump’s reelection. Which seems like a lot!…

Within the larger campaign, some leaders told Business Insider they were in the dark regarding the AMMC arrangement, saying that they were generally aware the company was used to purchase TV, radio, and digital advertising but had no idea exactly how much each vendor was keeping for itself. While some advisers have accused former campaign manager Brad Parscale of mismanaging money, the bulk of the cash spent by AMMC—$415 million—occurred after Parscale was fired on July 15. (Parscale has defended his spending as campaign manager.)

As for what Parscale’s successor, Bill Stepien, knew of the situation, a Republican close to the White House suggested to Business Insider that Stepien may have purposely kept himself in the dark so as not to anger Kushner. Another source, though, believed the first son-in-law may have been the one keeping the information from Stepien. “Nothing was done without Jared’s approval,” the source said. “What Stepien doesn’t know is because Jared doesn’t want him to know.”…

Paul Waldman is more of a cynic:

… To be clear, it could well be that no laws were violated, scrupulous about obeying the rules as the Trump and Kushner families are known to be. But the whole point of shell companies is to hide something; in this case, the campaign was able to show over $600 million in payments to the shell company, American Made Media Consultants Corp., on its Federal Election Committee filings, without the details that would be known if whatever they were spending money on was paid directly to vendors.

And while most of that $600 million probably went to buy advertising, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the favored officers of the shell company got nice salaries, nor if there were ways that it was used to funnel campaign contributions back to Trump himself.

We may never know. But I know this: Trump’s supporters couldn’t care less, even if it’s their money.

That’s because he has spent years convincing them that self-dealing and graft are perfectly fine. The only question is whether it’s the people you like who are benefiting.

This was always Trump’s argument about unethical behavior: not that he’s innocent and others are guilty, but that everyone is guilty, so we shouldn’t worry about his misdeeds. Everyone is corrupt, everyone is on the take, everyone mistreats women, we’re living in a world without morals or principles and all that matters is whether you win…

To be continued…

Reader Interactions

190Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    Look at it this way: Every million dollars that Jared and the rest of that family grifted away was a million dollars less that they had to spend on ads, GOTV, etc. We should be thanking Jared for being such an efficient parasite.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    To be clear, it could well be that no laws were violated, scrupulous about obeying the rules as the Trump and Kushner families are known to be.

    That is some first class shade Waldman is throwing up there.

  7. 7.

    Citizen Alan

    After all these years, I have yet to see a single picture of Jared Kushner where he looks remotely human. I don’t think I’ve seen one where he even attempted to smile.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    And speaking of Jared, the Post’s latest ‘how Trump fucked up the COVID response’ story has, as one might expect, lots of Jared. Sample:

    There were other problems too. Kushner’s initiative to stand up drive-through testing sites nationwide at retail stores such as CVS, Target and Walgreens, for instance, may have been a good idea in theory but almost instantly raised concerns. Government officials asked Kushner and his team whether they had fully considered the logistical and supply issues behind setting up the sites — including swabs and reagents for tests, and protective equipment for the clinicians administering them.
    Kushner’s team responded that they had it covered, but it quickly became clear they did not. At a time when health-care workers were using garbage bags as gowns and reusing N95 masks because of severe shortages, roughly 30 percent of “key supplies,” including masks, in the national stockpile of emergency medical equipment went toward Kushner’s testing effort, according to an internal March planning document obtained by The Post and confirmed by one current and one former administration official.
    Though Kushner had initially promised thousands of testing sites, only 78 materialized, the document said, and the national stockpile was used to supply more than half of those.
    “The knock against Jared has always been that he’s a dilettante who will dabble in this and dabble in that without doing the homework or really engaging in a long-term, sustained, committed way, but will be there to claim credit if things go well and disappear if things go poorly,” a former senior administration official said. “And this is another example of that.”

  10. 10.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @dmsilev: Old Army saying: “Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics.”

    Jared doesn’t even qualify as an amateur.

  13. 13.

    Martin

    Haha! I’m just reading todays news now and the idea of Sidney Powell as Special Council to investigate the election just proves this timeline can’t get any dumber. January is going to be fucking wild, and not in a good way.

  14. 14.

    Starfish

    @Baud: I feel like all the assets should be frozen at 12:01pm on January 21 until there is a thorough investigation of all the financial misdeeds starting with the stealing of all the inauguration funds.

  16. 16.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Well, it’s meant to be more inclusive for non-binary Hispanic people. Latino and Latina and inherantly gendered. I’m not sure what the solution is but that’s why Latinx was created

    Also, since it’s an OT, directed at nobody in particular: is the Medium Cool thing happening tomorrow? It’s every Sunday, right? I couldn’t find a time for it. I haven’t started listening to the Winds of Change podcast

  17. 17.

    Martin

    @dmsilev: Read this yesterday.

    Operation Warp Speed only started market research into temperature-monitoring for the boxes on Nov. 9, according to the Controlant agreement, though the government signed a $1.95 billion contract with Pfizer to provide 100 million doses of the vaccine in July.

    The late-stage contract with Controlant suggests that this issue wasn’t fully thought through when the U.S. government signed the contract with Pfizer, said Ameet Sarpatwari, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

    “Somewhere the ball got dropped,” he said. “Instead of turning off [the monitoring system], turning back on, it could have just been a continuous process. From a safety standpoint, that seems to be a better way to go.”

    These people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and they’re the laziest fucking people on earth. Government is all about grinding out solutions that the free market would simply route around. They can choose their market, they can let a need surface and let some other company jump in and meet that need, government can’t do either. You do 100% of the job for 100% of the people, not 10% of the job for 10% of the people.

  19. 19.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    Is there a real chance of her becoming special counsel? I understand the (acting) AG would have to agree to it. I really really don’t want this mad woman spewing insanity well into the Biden administration from a government perch. Maybe there would be a way to marginalize her?

  23. 23.

    Kent

    @Baud: “Latinx” is the stupidest thing ever according to my wife who is Chilean.

    As she says…why is it that just the word “Latino” is offensive when the entire language is gendered?  Are the busy bodies going to re-write the entire Spanish language?

    Policx instead of Policia

    Doctorx intead of Doctora

    Perrx instead of Perro

    Profesorx instead of Profesora

    Abogadx intead of abogado

    San Franciscx intead of San Francisco

    Nevadx intead of Nevada

    Coloradx intead of Colorado

    San Antonix instead of San Antonio

    and so forth

    And if you don’t want the gendered term in English, use an English word like “Hispanic” instead.

  24. 24.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Baud:

    I actually don’t think Trump will end up in jail

    Let’s try to keep hope alive on this one.  I’d certainly enjoy seeing Jared Pukestain end up behind bars.

  25. 25.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    I thought special counsels couldn’t be fired? Except for cause…

    Oh I see! She’ll fuck up and commit a fireable offense

  27. 27.

    Baud

    @Kent:

    The article has an interesting example of more natural sounding options created by Spanish speakers. Using an “e” ending.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Medium Cool IS happening on Sunday at 6pm as usual, though without BG for a few weeks while he works on his book.

    I had said we would talk about ut thus week or next, but I think next week is probably better to give more people time to listen to Wind of Change if they want to.

  31. 31.

    Martin

    @Baud: Not so easy. Only the AG can fire a Special Council and only with cause. Mind you, Sidney Powell should easily clear the ‘with cause’ part because she’s fucking insane, but the whole point of a Special Council is to be able to investigate the president and be immune from termination.

  32. 32.

    Aleta

    Campaign donations?  Or a way to request favors, pay bribes or transform money from illegal sources?

  33. 33.

    dmsilev

    @Martin:  Lovely. Not surprised though. I would take issue with one bit:

    It’s fairly unusual for temperature-monitoring devices to go to ultra-low temperatures, and Daley said there weren’t enough alternatives available to replace those that Pfizer turned off. It was only in early December that Premier and providers learned that Operation Warp Speed (OWS) had resolved the problem, said Premier’s director of advocacy, Soumi Saha.

    Maybe not in the medical field, but in the industrial world, temperature monitors that go much colder are easily available in bulk. Either a thermocouple or a PT100 resistance thermometer will cheerfully measure down to -200 C, and you can buy them by the thousands in pretty much any form factor imaginable.

  34. 34.

    Kent

    @Baud:

    @Kent:

    The article has an interesting example of more natural sounding options created by Spanish speakers. Using an “e” ending.

    Yes, the “e” ending is sort of leaking out of young “woke” university types in Argentina.  We will see if it goes anywhere. Argentinian Spanish is so different from the rest anyway.

  36. 36.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @John Revolta:

    My understanding is that “Latinx” was created by nby (nonbinary) Latinos in and outside of academia, not “white people”. Which I assume is what you’re hinting at when you say “whiteplaining”

  37. 37.

    Matt McIrvin

    This was always Trump’s argument about unethical behavior: not that he’s innocent and others are guilty, but that everyone is guilty, so we shouldn’t worry about his misdeeds. Everyone is corrupt, everyone is on the take, everyone mistreats women, we’re living in a world without morals or principles and all that matters is whether you win…

    This is the RT/Sputnik line on Vladimir Putin’s misdeeds, too. Birds of a feather.

    About “Latinx”, I understand the anti- argument here, but the level of general glee over it makes me think a lot of people are just itching for some reason to throw nonbinary/gender-nonstandard people under the bus, and it reminds me of all the million attempts to pigeonhole feminist, gay or trans issues as a bourgeois white affectation, so I’m still a bit suspicious.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    What glee? It’s an interesting topic, but almost none of us are invested in the issue. I think the article said ⅔ of Latinos haven’t even heard of the term.

  41. 41.

    Kent

    @Martin: The whole article is a bit confusing.  What are these actual temperature sensors and how do they work?  Are they WiFi or cellular enabled so that the company can monitor them remotely?

    It just sounds like the company understandably doesn’t want to be liable for what happens to the vaccine after it leaves its control.  If these are digitally monitored from remote locations it seems the simpler solution would be to just sign over control to OWS when they are delivered.  Hand over the login codes or whatever.

    Probably a case of too many damn lawyers getting involved into something simple.

  42. 42.

    Martin

    @dmsilev: Yeah, but they’re referring to the whole package – a sensor plus display with integrated power and networking that is cheap enough to be disposable. Not hard to build, but not really a market for for those so you either need to contract to build to spec at scale on a short timeframe (a market that is almost exclusive to China) or you need to find that device OTS which you might find outside of China.

  44. 44.

    Raven

    @Kent:  When I was building an online Spanish course we had an Argentinian woman on the team. One time she wasn’t at a meeting and our Cuban colleague said “they are so arrogant but they speak soooo pretty”!

  46. 46.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Californians: are you concerned about the recall effort underway for Governor? I’ve read the organizers have made significant progress and have until March to get the 1,500,000 or so signatures necessary

  47. 47.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:About “Latinx”, I understand the anti- argument here, but the level of general glee over it makes me think a lot of people are just itching for some reason to throw nonbinary/gender-nonstandard people under the bus, and it reminds me of all the million attempts to pigeonhole feminist, gay or trans issues as a bourgeois white affectation, so I’m still a bit suspicious.

    Spanish is a gendered language.  Are you going to also change the thousands of other gendered titles, professions, and adjectives by which male, female, and nonbinary people are referred in Spanish?

    Rather than adopting a Spanish language word like “Latino” into English and then changing it because you don’t like that the whole language is gendered, perhaps the better solution is to simply use a non-gendered English word in the first place, like “Hispanic.”

  48. 48.

    Mike in NC

    Jared is the sniveling little shit I want most of all to go to prison. Maybe the cell his dad was in is available.

  50. 50.

    Splitting Image

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I thought special counsels couldn’t be fired? Except for cause…

    Oh I see! She’ll fuck up and commit a fireable offense

    “Will” is the wrong tense formation here.

    She is on the verge of being sued for libel and could be disbarred and charged with perjury based on what she’s done so far. Even if nothing is ever filed against her, she is an interested party to any investigation of the election and can’t be put in charge of it. It would be an enormous conflict of interest and simply accepting the job would be a fireable offense.

    Obviously, rules about conflicts of interest won’t start applying again until January 20th, so she could take the job and make trouble for a month. She might even be stupid enough to do that, but Biden would send her packing PDQ if that happens.

  51. 51.

    Baud

    @John Revolta:

    It does have spillover effects on everyone, however,  to the extent Spanish language traditionalists believe the issue is part of a larger lefty culture war agenda being pushed by Democrats.  Then you get into the whole “defund the police” type of problem with some people.  I don’t think this is there yet.

  54. 54.

    Kent

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): According to Wikipedia which has a long discourse on the topic:

    The term Latinx emerged in the early 21st century. The origins of the term are unclear. According to Google Trends, it was first seen online in 2004, and first appeared in academic literature “in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical to challenge the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language.” In the U.S. it was first used in activist and LGBT circles as a way to expand on earlier attempts at gender-inclusive forms of the grammatically masculine Latino, such as Latino/a and Latin@. Between 2004 and 2014, Latinx did not attain broad usage or attention.

    Use of x to expand language can be traced to the word Chicano, which had an x added to the front of the word, making it Xicano. Scholars have identified this shift as part of the movement to empower people of Mexican origin in the U.S. and also as a means of emphasizing that the origins of the letter X and term Chicano are linked to the Indigenous Nahuatl language. The x has also been added to the end of the term Chicano, making it Chicanx. An example of this occurred at Columbia University where students changed their student group name from “Chicano Caucus” to “Chicanx Caucus”. Later Columbia University changed the name of Latino Heritage Month to Latinx Hispanic Heritage Month. Salinas and Lozano (2017) state that the term is influenced by Mexican indigenous communities that have a third gender role, such as Juchitán de Zaragoza, Oaxaca. The term often refers specifically to LGBT people or to young people. Brian Latimer, a producer at MSNBC who identifies as nonbinary, says that the application of the term “shows a generational divide in the Hispanic community”. In 2016, a student newspaper described the term as “[having] been sweeping across college campuses in the [United States]”.

    As of 2018 the term Latinx was used nearly exclusively in the United States. Manuel Vargas writes that people from Latin America ordinarily would not think of themselves using the term unless they reside in the United States.

    Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera writes that in Puerto Rico, the “shift toward x in reference to people has already occurred” in limited academic settings and “for many faculty [in the humanities department at the University of Puerto Rico] hermanx and niñx and their equivalents have been the standard … for years. It is clear that the inclusive approach to nouns and adjectives is becoming more common, and while it may at some point become the prevailing tendency, presently there is no prescriptive control toward either syntax”.

    A 2019 poll (with a 5% margin of error) found that 2% of US residents of Latin American descent in the US use Latinx, including 3% of 18–34-year-olds; the rest preferred other terms. “No respondents over [age] 50 selected the term”, while overall “3% of women and 1% of men selected the term as their preferred ethnic identifier”.

    A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that only 23% of U.S. adults who self-identified as Hispanic or Latino had heard of the term Latinx. Of those, 65% said that the term Latinx should not be used to describe them, with most preferring terms such as Hispanic or Latino. While the remaining 33% of U.S. Hispanic adults who have heard the term Latinx said it could be used to describe the community, only 10% of that subgroup preferred it to the terms Hispanic or Latino. The preferred term both among Hispanics who have heard the term and among those who haven’t was Hispanic, garnering 50% and 64% respectively. Latino was second in preference with 31% and 29% respectively. Only 3% self identified as Latinx in that survey.

    A 2020 study based on interviews with 34 Latinx/a/o students from the US found that they “perceive higher education as a privileged space where they use the term Latinx. Once they return to their communities, they do not use the term”.

  55. 55.

    Redshift

    @Martin:

    Not so easy. Only the AG can fire a Special Council and only with cause. Mind you, Sidney Powell should easily clear the ‘with cause’ part because she’s fucking insane, but the whole point of a Special Council is to be able to investigate the president and be immune from termination. 

    Normally, yes, but that also may depend on whether the regulations were followed for appointing the special counsel. For Barr’s appointment making Durham a special counsel, he doesn’t qualify under the requirements that it be someone outside government, because he’s a current USAtty, and Barr basically said “I know this, but I’m declaring that he’s a special counsel anyway,” probably for no other reason than to make it difficult to fire him.

    Since we all know how scrupulous Trump and his minions are about following the rules, it will probably be trivial that they didn’t properly appoint Powell, and she can be booted out posthaste. (Or, as previously noted, wait until the inevitable misconduct, which may happen even more quickly.)

  56. 56.

    John Revolta

    @Kent: I got called out recently for using “Hispanic”- seems like many Latinos don’t like it. Seems to depend on what part of the country you’re in, among other things. Then ya got “Chicano”……..

  57. 57.

    Martin

    @Kent: My guess is they’re cellular. The main reason why wifi isn’t used for many IoT things is that you need an interface on the device to get it on the network, something you don’t need with cellular. And that interface either adds a lot of cost or a lot of technical knowhow.

    It’s not too many lawyers, it’s not enough experts. Nobody talked to care providers about whether they were equipped to take over the monitoring task. Pfizer almost certainly made it clear that they only had control up to the point of delivery, but the feds never thought through the implications of that, because they’ve never done such things.

    We deal with that all the time in a host of different contexts, such that I’m experienced enough to ask that question as part of the contract discussions. And if I were coordinating on behalf of dozens, let lone thousands of distribution points, I’d immediately ask if we could take liability responsibility to my level, and how that would affect the contract, as it should lower the cost while also simplifying the whole effort, saving us more money.

    But I have colleagues that don’t see it that way because they only care about their budget lines, and not the aggregate cost. And so rather than a $3/unit aggregate liability cost, they’ll chose the $2 from my budget and $2 from your budget (both within the same organization so we’ll both get chewed out by whoever our common boss is for fucking up their budget line) rather than take the responsibility to see the logistics and cost benefits and take on the additional work.

    So the feds are paying Pfizer to cover liability through delivery, then the feds are paying the monitoring company extra to handle the hand-off of shutting down the units, then turning them immediately back on under a different account, plus the liability cost under the different account. I mean, it’s better than dumping the responsibility on Dippin Dots or whoever the fuck you think will handle distribution and discovering at the last minute that they can’t take the liability and can’t distribute.

    I mean, this is contract writing 101 and I’m not a lawyer. But any project manager should have this experience. Knowing your end-to-end liability coverage is a check item. Anticipating the scale of the work that ought to be your job to do to bring this project to completion through the downstream partners is key to know as well. I’ve waved off projects because I knew I couldn’t get those endpoints on board. And if you MUST get them on board, which is a pretty common situation in government, then sometimes you just need to eat it at your level and eliminate that whole variable. It doesn’t seem like any of this was even considered, that once they got the contract signed they had their victory condition, could take their PR victory lap, and someone else would handle the distribution bit, because there was no glory in that.

    Notable that nobody bothered to work on it until after the election.

  58. 58.

    different-church-lady

    @Kent:

    Are you going to also change the thousands of other gendered titles, professions, and adjectives by which male, female, and nonbinary people are referred in Spanish?

    Of course we are! We’re liberals! And to liberals there is no crime worse that “using wrong words”.*

    (HT to TBogg, but I never could find the post he first used it in.)

  59. 59.

    Martin

    @Redshift:

    Since we all know how scrupulous Trump and his minions are about following the rules, it will probably be trivial that they didn’t properly appoint Powell, and she can be booted out posthaste.

    Oh, that’s an excellent point. They’ll almost certainly fuck that up.

  61. 61.

    zhena gogolia

    @Kent:

    If it’s anything like Russian, there are native speakers of the language who are grappling with the gendered nature of it. It’s a very difficult problem, not limited to the single word “Latino.”

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    This wld literally be worse than no stimulus since they are pushing for mandated Depression policies from the Federal Reserve as the price. This is what's kept the economy alive. McConnell's strategy is to push the economy off a cliff (yes, a much higher one) in time for Biden. https://t.co/4gWuWlruU0— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 19, 2020

  64. 64.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Raven: I’m taking a Spanish class, and the teacher (who is Colombian) occasionally has us listen to Spanish TED talks. I thought the accent of one was kind of interesting, slightly different from what I was used to, and I asked her about the accent. She replied that it was Argentinian and started rhapsodizing about how perfect the Argentinian accent was.

  65. 65.

    Kent

    @Baud:Why don’t people just use “Latin”?

    I don’t know.  Latin America is distinguished from Spanish America I guess because of Brazil which is Portuguese not Spanish.  Latino is short for Latinoamericano which is the Spanish for Latin American.

    Surveys of the Latin American community within the US indicate that Hispanic is the preferred term, favored over Latino about about 2:1.  But I think some young woke university types object to “Hispanic” because they think it contains a colonial tilt by including Spain and excluding non-Spanish speaking indigenous peoples from the Americas.  But strictly speaking, Latino doesn’t include them either as the term refers to the Latin-languages of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French.

    As a Spanish speaker, I’m happy to adopt new terms. But I don’t think it is too much to ask to come up with Spanish language terms that don’t hurt your ear in Spanish.

  66. 66.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @zhena gogolia: Spanish, like other Romance languages, has a male and female version of many nouns, and when the gender is uncertain or refers to both, the male form is used.

    For instance father = padre, mother = madre, but parents = padres. Son = hijo, daughter = hija, children = hijos.

    Unless they start introducing a neutral form (which I guess is what the E thing is all about), that’s pretty hard-wired into the language.

  68. 68.

    zhena gogolia

    And now:1) Victoria/Victoria in a Miami dinner theater2) Trump posing with WH catering staff3) Gay wedding cake no one will bake4) Laurel and Hardy in jail5) "Welcome to The Great Neck Grande Chateau Reception Centre"6) An Xmas funeral home brochure7) Meet The Frackers pic.twitter.com/AS7sfIiqIF— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) December 19, 2020

  71. 71.

    Kent

    @Baud:

    @John Revolta:

    Chicano means of Mexican origin, no?

    I don’t know if there is any distinction between Latino and Hispanic.

    Chicano means of Mexican origin but I only really ever heard the term used in California, never Texas, for example.  I think it has mostly gone out of use.

    Strictly speaking:  Latino would be of Latin American origin including the Portuguese-speaking Brazil but not Spain or Portugal.

    Hispanic would be of Spanish-speaking origin including Spain but not Brazil

    But in in common use, no one really makes that distinction.

  75. 75.

    Kent

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Argentina, like Guatemala, uses the term “vos” instead of “tu” which gives you a whole different set of verb conjugations.  I learned my Spanish in the Peace Corps in Guatemala so learned the vos form.  My wife is Chilean and it gives her family no end of amusement to hear me speak like a Guatemalan campesino.

    There are a ton of Italian immigrants in Argentina and I think the accent is somewhat influenced by Italian, which is why it sounds different and perhaps more lyrical.

  78. 78.

    Martin

    Y’all are discovering the looming crisis in survey design. By shifting authority for identity from others to the individual, you create a situation where it becomes nearly impossible to gather statistical data that reflects that diversity of identity and represent it in a manner that is useful to the survey  administrators.

    The effort to measure things like gender diversity is more or less incompatible with the variety of ways that people identify themselves. So how do we handle this – do we stop trying to measure gender diversity (because there are places that REALLY need to be measured/monitored) or do we accept that we’re going to have to ask people to attach labels to themselves which are close, but not how they self-identify?

    We’re seeing that with the federal ‘two or more’ race category as our students are rapidly approaching a point where they will all be ‘two or more’, thereby rendering the whole exercise pointless.

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @Kent:

    I’m teaching myself Spanish, but I’m skipping the vos and vosotros forms.  Usted all the way.  Maybe if I get good enough, I’ll try to add on the other forms.

  81. 81.

    Kent

    @Martin:Y’all are discovering the looming crisis in survey design. By shifting authority for identity from others to the individual, you create a situation where it becomes nearly impossible to gather statistical data that reflects that diversity of identity and represent it in a manner that is useful to the survey  administrators.

    It is also a response to interest-group pressure within the US.  Which is why we had the 5 census categories: White, Black, Indian/Alaska native, Asian, and Hawaiian/Pacific islander with the cultural term Hispanic as an overlay.  Even though they don’t make sense racially or culturally anywhere outside of the US.

  83. 83.

    Kent

    @Baud: You don’t really need to learn the “tu” form unless you get a girlfriend or teach kids.

    Using “usted” with your girlfriend is like calling her “Ma’am.

  84. 84.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Baud: I believe vosotros is used only in Spain. In most of Latin America, Ustedes is used for both formal and informal plural.

    @Kent: I’ve run into many people who default to “tu”. It seems to vary with age and country. I wait to see how I’m addressed. but definitely go with “Usted” until I’m sure. Some people say that “Usted” makes them feel old.

    In your experience, are Mexicans especially formal? Maybe that’s another generational thing, but I’ve only heard phrases like “con su permiso” or somebody addressed as “Doña” from Mexicans.

  85. 85.

    Raven

    @frosty:

     

    • The Argentine accent is an entirely different beast. Argentina has a heavy Italian influence, so many Argentines speak with the sing-song rhythm that Italians use. They also pronounce their “ll” as “sh” instead of the “y” sound you are taught in school.
  87. 87.

    Kent

    @frosty: A lot of international Spanish TV hire Colombian announcers and actors for things like dubbing of English films and for newscasts and such because it is the most neutral form of Spanish, most easily understood by others.

    So if you turn on the Spanish language dubbing in Neflix chances are you are going to hear a Colombian accent.  Colombia also has, by far, the biggest film and TV industry in South America.

  89. 89.

    Kent

    @Keith P.: Yeah, and if a woman is using “usted” with her boyfriend there is probably some S&M dominance thing happening there.  Like if your girlfriend is always calling you “sir”

  93. 93.

    Cameron

    @Kent: …and with tears in her eyes!  “Sir,” she said to me, “sir – Mr. President…thank you!”  Yooge and bigly!

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Kent: Two things:

    (1) my understanding is, it was Latin-Americans, who came up with the term, not white people.  White people started using it out of respect.  Now, maybe they were wrong to do so, but I’d cut them some slack: they’re trying, after all.

    (2) In French, another heavily-gendered language, there is in fact a vigorous debate about this very subject: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9minisation_des_noms_de_m%C3%A9tiers_en_fran%C3%A7ais

    My French friend sent me this, when I asked him about Edith Cresson’s husband, and how he was named.  At the time, it was Mr. Le Premier Ministre for the prime minister, and Madame La Premiere Ministre for his wife.  And [I was working in France at the time] remember distinctly talk about addressing her as Mme. Le Premier Ministre, and (I suppose but do not know) her husband as Monsieur La Premiere Ministre.

    30yr later, there is a vigorous debate.

  95. 95.

    Emma from FL

    As a Cuban-American I have been forced to accept Latino for American purposes but I will accept Latinx when y’all accept Europeanx and all people from the Far East accept Asianx.

  97. 97.

    Kent

    Speaking of….

    This is in today’s Washington Post

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/latinx-latinos-unpopular-gender-term/2020/12/18/bf177c5c-3b41-11eb-9276-ae0ca72729be_story.html

    ‘Latinx’ hasn’t even caught on among Latinos. It never will.
    The term is an English-language contrivance, not a real gesture at gender inclusivity.

    By Jose A. Del Real

    The term “Latinx,” modifying “Latino” and “Latina” to describe people in a gender-inclusive way, has become commonplace — in some quarters. Opponents of transphobia and sexism leaven their social media posts, academic papers and workplace Slack chats with the term. Liberal politicians use it. Civil rights litigators use it. Social scientists use it. Public health experts like Anthony Fauci use it. Merriam-Webster added it to the dictionary in 2018. But the label has not won wide adoption among the 61 million people of Latin American descent living in the United States. Only about 1 in 4 Latinos in the United States are familiar with the term, according to an August Pew Research Center survey. Just 3 percent identify themselves that way. Even politically liberal Latinos aligned with the broad cultural goals of the left are often reluctant to use it.

    This disjunction is the subject of intense, often confused, debate. Users of “Latinx” are accused of being out of touch with working-class Latino communities and of practicing linguistic imperialism on the Spanish language, which, like French and Italian, is grammatically gendered. And the term’s opponents are often called transphobic, anti-LGBT and “machista” — chauvinist.

    The opposition to “Latinx” is often quotidian: The -x is hard to say in Spanish. Its plural derivatives, like “latinxs” and “amigxs” and “tixs,” are impossible to pronounce. For Spanish speakers navigating nonbinary gender in their day-to-day lives, the -x modification does not provide a road map for dealing with pronouns (el/ella) or gendered articles (el/la, un/una) in spoken Spanish. This English-language modification to Spanish-language grammar does not achieve linguistically what it hopes to achieve culturally: an expansive recognition of autonomy and difference that people can use in everyday life.

    Spanish has witnessed several innovations to make it more inclusive. A growing number of LGBTQ communities here and abroad use “Latine” (la-tee-neh). Not only does it sound much less awkward in Spanish than “Latinx,” but the -e can be applied to other words in verbal Spanish very easily, in lieu of the masculine -o or the feminine -a. The gender-neutral pronoun “elle” (pronounced: ey-eh) has become a popular modification for “el” (he) and “ella” (she) when the person being identified is nonbinary. None of these has caught on in the United States, even as “Latinx” has become more common in news headlines, official public health communiques, medical discussions, corporate emails and glossy Instagram posts by social influencers.

    Meanwhile, domestic American politics have subsumed the debate over “Latinx.” This fall’s election highlighted the nuanced political leanings of 30 million voters of Latin American descent, about 1 in 3 of whom nationally voted to reelect President Trump. Political preferences and calculations within this group vary widely based on where people live, as well as their ancestry, faith, age, gender, education, income and other variables.

    Nevertheless, some strategists and journalists argue that progressives’ embrace of “Latinx” lost some votes among Latino communities in Florida and Texas by imposing a label on people who do not use it to describe themselves. (The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its members appear to rarely use the term in statements to their constituents.) But that explanation ignores more easy-to-prove causes, including the absence of early and sustained investment by Democratic campaigns in the Latino communities of Florida and the Texas borderlands. Democrats, by contrast, fared far better in states like Arizona and Nevada, where grass-roots Mexican American advocates have built effective political mobilization efforts.

    So Latinx cost us votes in Florida and Texas?   Hmmmm.

    Read the whole thing.

  100. 100.

    Jinchi

    with Mike Pence’s nephew John Pence serving as vice president.

    That’s an interesting detail.  Mike Pence was in the cool kids club the whole time.

  101. 101.

    Kent

    @Chetan Murthy: (1) my understanding is, it was Latin-Americans, who came up with the term, not white people.  White people started using it out of respect.  Now, maybe they were wrong to do so, but I’d cut them some slack: they’re trying, after all.

    I think it was more self-identifying Latino college kids in the US of whom my own daughter was one, having just graduated with a communications degree.  No one in Latin America outside Puerto Rico uses the term.  She is white and privileged (and a blonde southern sorority girl) but likes to be Latino too.

  104. 104.

    Danielx

    @Cameron:

    Would there were knitting needles I could plunge into my mind’s eye.

    Mind you, a guy who has to appear so dominant in every public setting, well, you have to wonder if his twig is bent in a different direction in private. Which is almost worse, what with the image of Melania using a flogger on his pasty white ass.

    I have GOT to stop….:

  105. 105.

    Kent

    @Gin & Tonic: I did notice that the stop signs in Argentina all say “PARE” instead of “ALTO” like in Mexico.

    I wonder if that is also the “safe word” in Argentina.

  106. 106.

    Jinchi

    @Kent: So Latinx cost us votes in Florida and Texas?

    Yeah, I don’t think so.

    But Latinx is an awkward kluge, and replacements like Latine seem more natural.

    It’s similar to American English where ‘they’ has effectively become a gender-neutral third person singular form via common usage without most people even thinking about it.

  110. 110.

    VeniceRiley

    Will we clean our own English house first?  Mr. And Mrs. and Ms.?  Can I interest you in a subscription to Mx. Magazine?  First edition guest edited by Glorix Steinem!

  113. 113.

    tokyokie

    @Baud:

    I don’t know if there is any distinction between Latino and Hispanic.

    Brazilians are Latinos, but they aren’t Hispanics.

  114. 114.

    Rand Careaga

    On the Latino/Latinx/Hispanic usage kerfuffle: my grandfather was born in Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande without benefit of formalities in 1916, and my father was born just a few years later, and Spanish was his first language (when I accompanied him to Mexico City on a family vacation in the sixties, he affected a lisping “Castilian” diction, which, I noticed with considerable embarrassment, caused the locals to roll their eyes).

    My generation of Careagas, however, grew up thoroughly assimilated in Eisenhower’s America. We knew that we had an “ethnic” surname, and Grandfather C spoke English with an almost impenetrable accent, but we regarded ourselves as bog-standard suburban—read “white”—Americans.

    Fast forward to 1980 and I am working in a lowly clerical position for the venerable San Francisco firm of Flatline, Comatose, Torpor & Drowse (BrainDead Systems since an ill-considered 2003 merger), doing data entry on a green-phosphor terminal. Suddenly there looms before me the Regional Vice-President: “Cah-ree-gah,” he says, mispronouncing it, something I was long accustomed to by then. “That a Hispanic name?” “It is,” I replied, sensing where this was going. “Good. Good! They been after us to hire and promote more Hispanics”—I should interject here that even in those days FCT&D did enough business with the Feds that they liked to give at least lip service to the political climate du jour, and this was late Carter administration—“but where do you find a qualified Hispanic? I mean, really!”

    It bears mentioning that the adjacent terminals left and right were manned by native Spanish speakers. “Where indeed?” I responded awkwardly.

    Well, the upshot is that two days later I was yanked from data entry and into a coveted slot in the “International Division,” a professional career track. FCT&D got to tell the Feds that they’d promoted me, and did not have to put up with any annoying “ethnic” mannerisms or demands (they’d been burned by the last guy they so elevated, who really was a thoroughly worthless employee). It’s funny, though, because over the years I’ve frequently been mistaken for an Englishman, because I speak as I write in subordinate clauses, but never as a grandson of Mexico.

    My younger brother (b. 1961) did not put himself aggressively forward as Hispanic, but quietly advanced that counter at various junctures of his academic career, and I have the impression that it has served as a passive defense in the course of some of these in-house political struggles. He and I are, understandably, indifferent to the present issues of nomenclature.

  115. 115.

    opiejeanne

    @Baud: When I was in college, back in the Dark Ages, the Latin American & Mexican American college kids started embracing the term, “chicano”. They said it is derived from the word “chicanery”, that  to be referred to as chicano was an insult when the word began but they decided to turn it around and referred to themselves that way. I’m not sure that’s true, that it was derived from chicanery. I’ve read that it is from a NA word, probably noted on Wikipedia

  119. 119.

    opiejeanne

    @frosty: Cuban Spanish is … interesting. My best friend is Guatemalan, came to the US as a young girl. She was visiting us and I introduced her to my daughters’ ballet teacher, a Cuban. Her Spanish sounded elegant to me, while his sounded like he was chewing the words, but they understood each other.

  121. 121.

    Gravenstone

    @Martin: This isn’t rocket science. It isn’t even new technology. We purchased third party temperature recorders to ship with thermally sensitive products. All you have to do is plug them into a USB port and you can download the temperature profile for the entire trip to ensure product viability. These fucking idiots didn’t even try to follow through on ensuring full  time temperature monitoring.

  122. 122.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: You’re learning usted but not tu? Weird.

    Mr. Suzanne is a bilingual speech-language pathologist. Up until this year, he lived in CA and AZ his whole life. We’re both super-used to Mexican Spanish, to the point that I didn’t recognize the language the first time I heard Spanish people speaking it. When I learned Spanish, I was not taught the vosotros forms because my teacher wanted us to be able to speak primarily to our Mexican classmates.

  123. 123.

    Craig

    @Raven: Well played. I just watched Prime Suspect 7. When she delivers that line there’s almost a little wink from her. When they shot that show she’d just wrapped The Queen, which I find pretty hilarious as a little production easter egg.

  124. 124.

    Mike in NC

    On the TV show “Six Feet Under”, one of the characters working at a funeral home in Los Angeles was a Puerto Rican guy, and he sometimes got into it with the local Mexican-Americans, who would ask him, “Dude, where the hell are you from?”

  125. 125.

    SFAW

    Now that y’all have settled the whole Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine/Latinoj thing, can you get to work on the “literally”/”figuratively” issue?

  128. 128.

    Suzanne

    @Rand Careaga: My and my husband’s surname is not super-common, but is derived from Latin and is found in Italian, Mexican, Spanish, and Dominican families. White people (and we ARE white people, FFS) slaughter it all the time. Howev, now there’s a famous pro ball player with the same name (not a relative), so someone gets it right just a touch more often these days.

  131. 131.

    CaseyL

    “Latine” makes more sense to me than “Latinx,” not least because I know how to pronounce it! (LaTinks? Please. You know that’s gonna get bastardized and trivialized into LaTwinks.)

    The kerfuffle over gendered pronouns reminds me of the meltdown among SciFi’s conservative fans over Anne Leckie using female pronouns for everyone in her Ancillary trilogy. It was a joy to see so many RWNJs having conniptions. I also enjoyed the undeniable mental frisson reading the books gave me: it was unsettling, in a good way.

  134. 134.

    Martin

    @Gravenstone: That doesn’t work. You can’t rely on thousands of end users to do that reliably (the grocery store is the one administering the vaccine in my moms area).

    This is remote monitored with on-device feedback. If the temp is exceeded or the number of openings exceeded, the on-device monitor needs to indicate that the batch can no longer be used. It needs to work in a clinical setting under uncontrollable conditions and it needs to basically be failsafe. You’re describing an ODB II port, not a flashing light on the dashboard that says ‘DO NOT USE’.

    Like I said, the components are easy – the solution is not so easy.

    But Pfizer had already solved that problem, all the feds needed to do was take administrative responsibility, and they either forgot to or refused to.

  136. 136.

    SFAW

    @WaterGirl:

     I think the Israeli-Palestinian issue is next, but maybe literally and figuratively can be up after that.

    SUCH a kidder, you are. Didn’t Jared already fix that?

    Speaking of Jared, is there a German version of “face so smug-looking that it requires application of a Louisville Slugger”? [ETA: Because Backpfeifengesicht doesn’t really cut it, in my estimation.]

  137. 137.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    So Latinx cost us votes in Florida and Texas?   Hmmmm.

    Um you might want to read a little further in the section you quoted:

    But that explanation ignores more easy-to-prove causes, including the absence of early and sustained investment by Democratic campaigns in the Latino communities of Florida and the Texas borderlands. Democrats, by contrast, fared far better in states like Arizona and Nevada, where grass-roots Mexican American advocates have built effective political mobilization efforts.

    I personally don’t have a dog in this race. I think it’s probably a kludgy term where Latine might work better. I don’t think anybody is trying to force Latinx on anybody and I don’t think it cost any tangible amount of votes. Really, if “Latinx” made somebody vote for Trump over Biden I question how gettable they were in the first place; such a voter would be a moron

  138. 138.

    The Pale Scot

    Since it’s an open thread can I share a bit of joy. Children of a friend of the family who’s mom is a.., well a Florida women were put into foster care while I was in the hospital. They’ve had a shitty year. After talking to the social worker and dealing with a lot friction since I can’t know where they are I was able to send presents to an Amazon locker for the fosters to pick up. Since the fosters have 2 kids I got them stuff too. I told the fosters to tell The Terrors that Santa put one of his top Elves on the job this year. Hopefully I’ll get vids and pics.

    In this shitfest of a year, this is the most fun I’ve had

  139. 139.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @dmsilev: i also suspect this why the stories that Trump’s big donors dried up; they figured out he was just pocketing their money.

  140. 140.

    Gravenstone

    @Kent:

     “tu” form 

    This reminds me of a minor gaffe I made in college. One of the guys in our small dorm was from Puerto Rico. His mother called while he was out and when I told him “tu madre called”, he just about died laughing. Apparently I had put way too much emphasis on “tu”, with the effect basically being “yo mama called”. That was good for a laugh the rest of the year.

  141. 141.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Probably a bit more subtle than that.  Since your adverage Hispanic calls themselves by their families nation of origin these weird names like “Latinix” make them wonder of the Democrats are really paying attention.

  142. 142.

    gwangung

    @Major Major Major Major: Well, yes….but let’s not pretend that there isn’t support in some parts; where I am, there are a fair number of non-cis gendered and non binary folks, so the term makes a fair amount of sense, and I’m not going to contest it. (And it’s certainly true that terms of identity are not static; I’ve gone from Third World people to POC to BIPOC to global majority, so…)

  143. 143.

    Zelma

    @Rand Careaga:

    My university was not known for diversity of any sort.  Happened that the dean of the college counted as a two-fer: a woman and Hispanic.  Of course, her Hispanic name was her married name; she was German.  But she was a woman – and a good dean.

  144. 144.

    Major Major Major Major

    @gwangung: I wouldn’t dream of contesting what somebody wants to be called, but if I was writing a press release for the broader community I definitely wouldn’t reach for it. And I guess I’m reacting to well-meaning white people who *would*, which as a completely unhelpful piece of anecdata is the majority of times I see it used.

  146. 146.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SFAW: Speaking of Jared, is there a German version of “face so smug-looking that it requires application of a Louisville Slugger”? [ETA: Because Backpfeifengesicht doesn’t really cut it, in my estimation.]

    I believe the term is jaredkushner.

  147. 147.

    cain

    @Kent:

    Also what about us Indians? I have desi(x) I have no idea what the gender all inclusive term is supposed to be.

    Our languages is probably going to go through a lot of changes with trying to include the non-binary types. It’s going to be hard to retrofit everything into these ages old languages.

  150. 150.

    NotMax

    @Emma

    Connie Chung shredded whatever professional credibility she may have had the instant she signed on to host Big Brother.

  152. 152.

    cain

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    We might need to change the spelling to ‘Bawd’ instead of ‘Baud’. :D Although I looked it up and the Shakespearean meaning of Bawd is quite hilarious.

  153. 153.

    JAFD

    @Kent: Mr. JAFD dwells in the neighborhood of Newark settled by the Portugese – and the Brazilians, Angolans, immigrants from Mozambique (whom I know have a unique name, but which I know not offhand), and other Lusophone parts of the world.  The questions of how they fit into the typology of ‘Latinos’ …

    And let us not forget the Italians…

  155. 155.

    Emma

    @NotMax: … are you seriously mixing up Connie Chung with Julie Chen? And even if she DID host Big Brother, why would that discredit her experience of being constantly told that only Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer could have the prestige interviews?

  156. 156.

    cain

    @Delk:

    Aren’t we all – bi -something? I mean I’m half aryan and dravidic? :-) Actually I suspect I am more aryan than dravidic.

  157. 157.

    cain

    @opiejeanne:

    Have you heard Puerto Rican spanish? They speak really fast and drop words. They get uptight with Mexicans because they talk too slow. That was about 33 years ago. Dunno what the attitude is now. I was on spring break with a bunch of puerto ricans .. that was.. interesting.

  159. 159.

    cain

    @NotMax:

    lol – I wonder if Gandhi was in fact non-binary – the man was wierd. An amazing person for sure – but all those amazing people have some strangeness to them.

  160. 160.

    Emma

    @NotMax: yeah, sorry that I was a little snappy, I still have trauma from working under a racist white woman who was protected by the (also white) higher-ups despite her sheer incompetence, so I felt Connie Chung’s pain deeply. Edit: not actual trauma, to be clear, I didn’t have to seek therapy or anything, but boy do I have stories.

  162. 162.

    Origuy

    @Gravenstone: Apparently I had put way too much emphasis on “tu”, with the effect basically being “yo mama called”.

    “Tu madre” has a stronger connotation than that. The implication is that there is a missing verb in the phrase, chingar, which means to fuck. If you want to say your mother in a familiar way, “tu mamá” is suggested. Also, don’t do “shave and a haircut” on your car horn in Mexico. That sound is also called “tu madre”. The same goes for grandmother, “tu abuelita” is safer.

  164. 164.

    VeniceRiley

    @Emma: Beat me to it only because I forgot Julie Chen’s name. Connie Chung is beloved in the LA TV market form her local anchor days. Smart and funny. Julie Chen is an asshole married to a sex pest.

  166. 166.

    Gravenstone

    @Origuy: Yeah well, the nice old lady who taught me HS Spanish didn’t cover such trivialities as colloquial familiar speech. As I noted, the kid had the grace to have a sense of humor about it. In a different environment, likely a different outcome.

  167. 167.

    Brachiator

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I actually remember Connie Chung back when she was the junior person in the White House Press Corpse during Watergate, then she was a local anchor here in LA.

    I remember her mainly as a local LA anchor. There was Tricia Toyota on one channel and Connie Chung on another.  Both were personable and competent.

     

  169. 169.

    Ruckus

    @Origuy:

    I haven’t heard “Tu madre” in a long time. And I live in an area of socal where Spanish may not be the first language but it’s probably close.

    I wonder if I’m out of touch or if it’s not in as much use as it used to be? I mean it was so common that I used to use it on occasion.

  170. 170.

    Ruckus

    @Origuy:

    Yes, when I first heard the phrase it was explained to me that chingar was left out on purpose and the english translation was in fact fuck your mom. But leaving that out made the phase have a bit wider usability.

  171. 171.

    rikyrah

    I mean…

    None of this can be a surprise.

    Everyone knew that they were stealing everything not nailed down ?

     

    Now, these are the rich rubes they have been ripping off.

     

    The post-election scam is the poor rubes.

     

    Not my money, so, I don’t care.

    They knew who they.supported.

  172. 172.

    Mary G

    If I missed discussion of this earlier, sorry. WaPo article:
    Lou Dobbs debunks his own claims of election fraud — after a legal demand from Smartmatic.

    Lou had to have a guy with a Hispanic name (oh, the horror!), Edward Perez, an expert with the nonprofit Open Source Election Technology Institute in a segment where he said many, many claims about voting machines multiple hosts and guests have made are completely false.

    The segment, it turns out, was in response to a 20-page legal demand letter that was sent this month by Smartmatic to Fox News Media. Similar letters went to Fox’s smaller competitors on the right, Newsmax and One America News.

    and

    Specifically, the company charged: “Fox News has engaged in a concerted disinformation campaign against Smartmatic. Fox News told its millions of viewers and readers that Smartmatic was founded by [the late Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez, that its software was designed to fix elections, and that Smartmatic conspired with others to defraud the American people and fix the 2020 U.S. election by changing, inflating, and deleting votes.”

    Not only are these claims false, the company said, it played only a relatively minor role in this year’s presidential election, as a contractor for the election process in Los Angeles County, Calif.

    and, the best part, bold mine:

    It is unclear whether the fact-checking segment fulfilled Smartmatic’s demand for a retraction. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment Saturday. In the legal demand letter, Smartmatic said that the comments made on Fox will cost the company “hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars” in value.

    Fox had to run the segment on Judge Jeannine and Maria Bartiromo as well. NewsMax has told Smartmatic to fuck off, and OAN has no comment.

    It’s nice to see Fox have to admit to multiple lies, not that I think it’ll change a single deplorable’s mind. Moar, please.

  173. 173.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Matt McIrvin:

    About “Latinx”, I understand the anti- argument here, but the level of general glee over it makes me think a lot of people are just itching for some reason to throw nonbinary/gender-nonstandard people under the bus, and it reminds me of all the million attempts to pigeonhole feminist, gay or trans issues as a bourgeois white affectation, so I’m still a bit suspicious.

    I’m definitely seeing outsized umbrage here — similar to the folks getting bent out of joint over the use of singular “they/them” — which is hella disappointing.

    As Goku said, “Latinx” was created by queer/trans/non-binary folks of Latin American heritage, so it’s hardly whitesplaining. It was created precisely because the gendered language of Spanish didn’t allow space for their identities.

    Whether it resonates with their larger communities is a different matter, and I’ll defer to whatever they work out for themselves. (Although personally I think Latine and -e endings for words is an elegant solution.)

  175. 175.

    Jay

    The buzz of a drone at night was the first sign of trouble.

    Next came the roar of a larger, low-flying aircraft, which alerted residents of the Afghan village of Omar Khail that soldiers were nearby. Men in camouflage moved through the streets speaking Pashto and English. It was December 2018, and the air was frigid. They made their way to the madrassa, or religious school, where more than two dozen boys between the ages of 9 and 18 slept on the floors of several dormitory rooms.

    A neighbor watching from a window across the street saw a flash and heard a loud explosion as the front gate of the madrassa was blown open. Inside, the noise awakened 12-year-old Bilal, who was huddled in a room with nine other boys when an Afghan soldier burst through the door.

    “Wake up!” the man yelled in Pashto, pointing at the boys one by one with the barrel of his rifle, which was mounted with a flashlight. A second soldier entered, chose the two tallest boys, and led them out the door. The first soldier turned to leave, but before he did, he issued a warning to the rest of the boys cowering before him: “If I find you in this madrassa again, we won’t leave a single child alive.”

    Bilal and the others squeezed together as far from the door as they could, with their backs to a large window facing a central courtyard. Many were in tears; others couldn’t speak. From the hallway, Bilal heard words he recognized as English.

    “They’re not going to let us live,” a student murmured.

    In preparation for death, some of the boys recited the Muslim declaration of faith, known as the Shahada: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.”

    Just then, the sound of automatic gunfire tore along the corridor. “For a very short time,” Bilal said, it sounded like “there were many guns.” Boys’ screams came next, followed by two loud explosions. “One shook the whole building,” said Bilal. “We didn’t hear anything after this. Everyone was silent.”

    When the sun rose hours later, Bilal and about a dozen other students remained crouching in silence, some still trembling with fear. Nearby, in two of the school’s other rooms and in the basement, 12 more boys, their bodies mauled by bullets, lay crumpled on the floor.

    https://theintercept.com/2020/12/18/afghanistan-cia-militia-01-strike-force/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=theintercept&utm_source=twitter

  176. 176.

    hervevillechaizelounge

    Random factoid:  Connie Chung has been married to Maury Povitch since the ’80s.

  178. 178.

    Brachiator

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    As Goku said, “Latinx” was created by queer/trans/non-binary folks of Latin American heritage, so it’s hardly whitesplaining. It was created precisely because the gendered language of Spanish didn’t allow space for their identities.

    It was suggested by some folks of Latin American heritage. The Spanish speaking world is huge, and in Southern California, I only hear a small cadre of college students ever use the term.

    Similarly, there is no uniformity in the use of terms such as Chicano, Latino, Hispanic (which is totally made up and does not really exist in the Spanish language).

    Among Spanish speaking co-workers, friends, and relatives, the word just has not yet taken hold. It may in the future or something else may come along.

  179. 179.

    Jay

    @Brachiator:

    the same people using Latinx are the same people using them/they/helicopter,

    In Kamloops, maybe once every two years, I encountered someone sensitive or affirmative of pronouns,

    Here in Vancouver, once a day.

  180. 180.

    opiejeanne

    @cain: I grew up in LA County, so almost all of the Spanish speakers were Mexican Americans, and we all thought they talked too fast. I’ve heard Puerto Ricans a few times and it was much faster.

    My Spanish is very limited, a few useful words, the stuff you pick up from friends and neighbors. One of the charming kids at my elementary school taught me some dirty words in Spanish.

  181. 181.

    opiejeanne

    @rikyrah: Probably because he’s a Democrat. They did this to a previous governor, Gray Davis, and the result was Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  184. 184.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Californians: are you concerned about the recall effort underway for Governor? I’ve read the organizers have made significant progress and have until March to get the 1,500,000 or so signatures necessary

    Too soon to tell if this will amount to anything. A lot of people are angry that businesses have been shut down, but the wider distribution of the vaccine kinda deflates their defiance.

  185. 185.

    Jay

    @Brachiator:

    ReThugs are good at tapping into, nurturing and exploiting anger for votes.

    The Democratic Party, not so much.

    Otherwise, working for barely a living and relying on food banks, go fund me’s and other charity could be useful.

  186. 186.

    Brachiator

    @Jay:

    ReThugs are good at tapping into, nurturing and exploiting anger for votes.

    This is not just a Republican v Democrats thing. A lot of people have pandemic fatigue. But right now I don’t know if it is enough to sustain a recall campaign.

  187. 187.

    Jay

    @Brachiator:

    ReThugs and their allies are good at playing the blame game, misdirection.

    Up here, it’s a little bit different. Not a lot of people are willing to die as an “essential worker” for minimum wage when you can stay home, and get up to $4800 a month,

    to stay the fuck home.

  188. 188.

    Ian

    @Kent:

    Many Central and South American countries have a white/black (not nearly as binary as ours) divide, over time this has led to the developement of 3 “castes” historically, black, white, and mixed.  Strong anti-miscegenation laws in the United States have historically prevented whites and blacks from intermarrying, leading to small mixed populations in the US before 1960.  While other American countries may not have the same intensity of white/black divide as the United States, it is a feature of almost every western hemisphere colonial society.

  189. 189.

    oatler.

    Latinx only seems popular on the AV Club site. People should look to Germany or Greece, whose languages use three genders, as does every eastern European country. Maybe Esperanto was better.
    OK, you try learning Hungarian.

  190. 190.

    Lobo

    To add to the confusion of terms for “Latino”:

    The quest to save a dying Spanish dialect in Colorado’s San Luis Valley: “A treasure that exists nowhere else in the world”

    I refer to myself as Latino, Chicano, Hispanic, Hispano, New Mexican, etc. It depends on the setting.  It can get complicated.   But I am also chill on asking others how they refer to themselves and respect it. It beats getting into semantic fight. “Latinos” are diverse.   As another example, people from Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico and beyond have a distinct history.  I celebrate the diversity and prefer not to get get too hung up on labels.  Even though, my parents are from S. Col & N.  Mex., my Spanish is a mix of my parents’, Guatemalan and Argentinean.

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