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You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Late Night Open Thread: What’s the Opposite of ‘Schadenfreude’?

Late Night Open Thread: What’s the Opposite of ‘Schadenfreude’?

by Anne Laurie|  June 18, 202112:58 am| 53 Comments

This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, Racial Justice

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make sure Texas gets the memo this time https://t.co/1qDUkDpxtP

— zeddy (@Zeddary) June 17, 2021

Some people can’t even shut up and enjoy the picnics, because they so hate other peoples’ freedom…

republicans will 100% treat juneteenth like it’s al nakba https://t.co/O27Vs4CS81

— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) June 17, 2021

liking a day celebrating human freedom is the easiest layup in history and republicans can’t do it because it their base just super fucking dislikes black people

it’s a conundrum!

— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) June 17, 2021

“Juneteenth,” holiday celebrating liberation of slaves in United States, is opposed by proponents of “Columbus Day,” celebrating European introduction of slave trade to Americas.

— DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) June 17, 2021

You know all the people up in arms over Juneteenth would endorse Trump Day in a hot second.

— FBIDidARICO!Hat (@Popehat) June 17, 2021

it really doesn’t cross his mind that commemorating the end of slavery is a celebration of our history. like, it’s a thing to celebrate. like, “yay!” and stuff. being happy, better things, whole deal. https://t.co/H9Iis2GlIB

— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) June 17, 2021

Juneteenth parade Austin. Imagine a self-styled "patriot" being triggered by this pic.twitter.com/RWDAdrz4rX

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 17, 2021

"heritage Americans"? I am descendant of 8 generations of Corn Belt dirt farmers who arrived here in 1765, fought in the Continental Army, the Union Army, and pretty much every war since, and neither of us has as much American heritage as freed slaveshttps://t.co/OZLrTefL9J

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 17, 2021

just dropping this in for certain MEGA MAGA PATRIOTZ in my mentionshttps://t.co/bt26TdUFZe

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 17, 2021

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Reader Interactions

53Comments

  1. 1.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2021 at 1:11 am

    Justin Amash: “Plot twist in the fourth act.” Charlie Kirk on Juneteenth.

  2. 2.

    phdesmond

    June 18, 2021 at 1:14 am

    googling around,

    “If you want a rough German antonym of Schadenfreude (or simply schadenfreude in English texts — “enjoyment obtained from the mishaps of others,” as Merriam-Webster defines it), then Seligkeitfreude would work. Lisa always celebrates others’ successes.”
    or
    “The opposite of schadenfreude is called fremdscham, or the “vicarious embarrassment syndrome”. Essentially, people who have this syndrome tend to feel embarrassment for someone else’s misfortune.”

  3. 3.

    phdesmond

    June 18, 2021 at 1:16 am

    @phdesmond:

    here’s a third possibility:

    “Gluckschmerz is also a compound term of two German words: Gluck, meaning luck, and Schmerz, meaning pain. It represents being displeased by an event presumed to be desirable for someone else.”

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    June 18, 2021 at 1:23 am

    By this time next year it will be so commercialized that there’ll be greeting cards with a sound chip which plays “Unchained Melody” when the card is opened.

    //

  5. 5.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2021 at 1:26 am

    “Journalist Janet Malcolm dies at 86.”

    Her most famous work was “The Journalist and the Murderer,” published as a two-part essay in The New Yorker in 1989 and as a book the next year. A forensic examination of the relationship between Joe McGinniss, a best-selling author, and Jeffrey MacDonald, a doctor who was convicted of murdering his family, it castigated Mr. McGinniss for pretending to believe in Dr. MacDonald’s innocence long after he was convinced of his guilt. Ms. Malcolm focused less on the murder—a story told many times over in articles, books, TV movies and podcasts—than on a lawsuit that Dr. MacDonald had brought against Mr. McGinniss, saying that he had deceived him.

    Her essay began with one of the most arresting first sentences in literary nonfiction: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

    But with the passage of time, and the explosion of a far more complex and treacherous media landscape, her broadsides against her profession seem almost quaint.

    In fact, The Journalist and the Murderer has become something of a classic and was ranked No. 97 on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    June 18, 2021 at 1:32 am

    @phdesmond: Gluckschmerz — being displeased by an event presumed to be desirable for someone else.

    Thank you, that’s the word I was looking for!

  7. 7.

    phdesmond

    June 18, 2021 at 1:36 am

    @Anne Laurie: the two first ones seemed way off, especially the second.

  8. 8.

    Anne Laurie

    June 18, 2021 at 1:47 am

    @Steeplejack: IMO, the best ‘contemporary’ introduction to Malcolm’s skills as a character assassin is her 2011 review of Sarah Palin’s TV ‘documentary’.

  9. 9.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    June 18, 2021 at 1:47 am

    I think I’ve found the word: Mudita. Indian “To take joy in the joy of others”.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudita

  10. 10.

    ian

    June 18, 2021 at 2:05 am

    I guess this isn’t really a surprise, certainly the juicers here more familiar with twitter knew this, but I was surprised at how far apart/ separate universe left twitter and right twitter were.  It is like switching the channel between fox and msnbc.  Two entirely different languages and moral value systems, compressed into repeated bursts of 140 words.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    June 18, 2021 at 2:10 am

    @Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    Also, kind of, the Yiddish firgun (Feer-GUHN). Ungrudging and genuine vicarious delight, empathetically joining in with tooting of their horns by others.

  12. 12.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    June 18, 2021 at 2:17 am

    Two Covid stories here in LA:

    I received an email from The Huntington, they’re doing Covid shots there.  Get your shot and get a free admission for you and a guest the day you get your shot.

    On the down side, our positivity rate has gone up from 0.4% to 0.5%.

  13. 13.

    JWR

    June 18, 2021 at 2:34 am

    Beware the Woke Cathode Ray Tubes!

    On Fox, (Quisha) King said teachers unions “want to remake America” and are “trying to raise up a generation that believes everything that they’re pushing; they’re trying to raise little woke Marxists” through “critical race theory,” which she later added is actually “aligned with the KKK and true white supremacy.” (Media Matters via NBC!)

  14. 14.

    Tony Jay

    June 18, 2021 at 2:54 am

    “When my ancestors shed their blood on every battlefield from Bull Run to Gettysburg they did it because they loved freedom and rejected tyranny, not to celebrate Hip Hop culture and pour scorn on the heritage of white, working class Americans. This fake holiday trivialises their sacrifice and exists only as a virtue- signalling exercise by publicity hungry radicals!”

    Beauregard Jackson Lee Tarleton III

  15. 15.

    Martin

    June 18, 2021 at 3:06 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Delta outrunning the marginal rate of vaccination.

  16. 16.

    The Dangerman

    June 18, 2021 at 3:07 am

    FY, YFF

    I’m thinking BJ lurker there.

  17. 17.

    James E Powell

    June 18, 2021 at 3:33 am

    @Tony Jay: 

    He needs one of those nicknames

    Beauregard “Buddy” Jackson Lee Tarleton III

  18. 18.

    opiejeanne

    June 18, 2021 at 3:35 am

    @ian:  280 words now. The limit was doubled several years ago.

  19. 19.

    opiejeanne

    June 18, 2021 at 3:37 am

    @Tony Jay: It’s scary how you can do that, replicate their grievance style.

  20. 20.

    bjacques

    June 18, 2021 at 3:50 am

    Shouldn’t that be “Manassas” instead of “Bull Run”? But I wouldn’t be surprised if Tarleton got it wrong too.

     

    In the words of Capt Macdonald: Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs.

  21. 21.

    Van Buren

    June 18, 2021 at 4:16 am

    @Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]: Feel free to experience some Mudita on my behalf, as I have managed to adopt a pupper. It took two weeks, felt like two months & we won’t actually get her til the 26th. She’s the epitome of muttdom & she’s a Jersey girl, so my wife decided she had to be Rosalita. I counteroffered Crazy Janey, but she used her superior negotiating skills to carry the argument.

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    June 18, 2021 at 4:40 am

    @JWR:

    Beware the Woke Cathode Ray Tubes!

    Because I just woke up and am reading with bleary, sleepy eyes, I first took this to be Beware the Woke Catholic Ray Tubes!

  23. 23.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    June 18, 2021 at 5:04 am

    @phdesmond: With that clarification, I must say I’m feeling schadenfreude at their gluckschmerz.

  24. 24.

    mrmoshpotato

    June 18, 2021 at 5:09 am

    You know all the people up in arms over Juneteenth would endorse Trump Day in a hot second.

    Yup.  Because the Confederacy is still alive and, well, they’re still racist, white trash.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    June 18, 2021 at 5:40 am

    Waitin’ on morning thread music.

    :)

  26. 26.

    JWR

    June 18, 2021 at 5:59 am

    @mrmoshpotato: I finally re-watched the Jon Stewart “Covid” segment, (from Monday night’s Colbert show), and yikes! Somebody here said he was being sarcastic, but I dunno. Sounded to me more like he came awfully close to calling it “The Wuhan Flu” without directly calling it “The Wuhan Flu”.

    In case anyone missed it, here’s where Stewart goes off the sciencey rails.

  27. 27.

    Tony Jay

    June 18, 2021 at 6:01 am

    @James E Powell:

    “I’m Buddy Tarleton and I’m here to tell you the truth about the Cultural Marxist takeover of American education, what “Woke Culture” really means, and how a small monthly donation from you can help me stop it. (applause) And this is my wife, Bubbles. She’s here to make the coffee and iron my shirts, like God intended!”

     

    @opiejeanne:

    The trick is not to put a moment’s rational thought into it. 8-)

  28. 28.

    Baud

    June 18, 2021 at 6:02 am

    I love that Ron Johnson prevented Trump from getting credit for Juneteenth.

  29. 29.

    Tony Jay

    June 18, 2021 at 6:04 am

    @bjacques:

    Shouldn’t that be “Manassas” instead of “Bull Run”? But I wouldn’t be surprised if Tarleton got it wrong too.

    Damn it. I knew it was a po-tay-to/po-tah-to thing, but I backed the wrong horse.

    Though, as you note, scumbag slaver killbot Tarleton was a Liverpool boy.

  30. 30.

    NotMax

    June 18, 2021 at 6:07 am

    @JWR

    Haven’t assigned a micronanogram of weight to anything emanating from Stewart’s piehole since … ever.

  31. 31.

    Matt McIrvin

    June 18, 2021 at 6:20 am

    @ian: Most of the Left Twitter I read was knocking the Juneteenth move as an empty symbolic gesture substituting for real action to dismantle systemic racism, which they see Democrats as unwilling to make.

  32. 32.

    Cameron

    June 18, 2021 at 6:36 am

    @Van Buren: “Shut up,” she explained? (h/t Ring Lardner)

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    June 18, 2021 at 6:42 am

    @Cameron

    Oh gawd. Ring Lardner, the wet dream of every high school English teacher.

  34. 34.

    Cameron

    June 18, 2021 at 6:44 am

    @Tony Jay: I am much confused.  The only Tarleton I’m familiar with in American history is Banastre Tarleton, and he operated a whole lot earlier than the US Civil War.  Guess I should stop reading horror stories and watching shitty TV – maybe take some time to, y’know, learn something.

  35. 35.

    Cameron

    June 18, 2021 at 6:46 am

    @NotMax: True, but I love that particular expression.

  36. 36.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    June 18, 2021 at 6:51 am

    @JWR: they’re trying to raise little woke Marxists” through “critical race theory,” which she later added is actually “aligned with the KKK and true white supremacy.

    More proof those people are stupid. But it is interesting that even the racialist can’t stand each other.

  37. 37.

    Tony Jay

    June 18, 2021 at 6:53 am

    @Cameron:

    No, no, that’s the one. I was just riffing off Tarleton’s enduring popularity on the hard-right of military-alt-hist-sci-fi as a ‘worthy enemy’ (in the same vein as Otto Skorzeny) who’s absolute bastardy is offset by his hard-fighting ruthlessness and the fact he was on their wavelength with regard to ‘other issues’, if you l know what I mean.

    Plus, he was English, so he’d have got the name of that battle wrong too.

  38. 38.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    June 18, 2021 at 6:56 am

    @JWR: I saw it and it looked to me that Stewart was try to play it as a joke but really meant it to me. Stewart’s eyes when Colbert asked him for evidence, it was clear Stewart was fighting the urge to break character and start screaming at Colbert for daring to question him.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    June 18, 2021 at 6:57 am

    @Matt McIrvin: That fits the left twitter template. These people are intellectually and emotionally invested in the failure of this administration, and nothing it does will ever be good enough for them.

    What I like is the way loyal Democrats push back. There are some very forceful advocates for Democratic policies on twitter.

  40. 40.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    June 18, 2021 at 6:59 am

    @Tony Jay: That Tarleton? You should also add “My family fought in booth the American Revolution and The Civil War, from Mananas to Fort Pillow and….”

    Fort Pillow is an infamous massacre of Black Union soldiers after they surrendered.

  41. 41.

    Cameron

    June 18, 2021 at 7:10 am

    @Tony Jay: So y’all want a Tubman twenty?  Well, we’re introducing the Tarleton quarter!  Pwned again, libtards!

  42. 42.

    Geminid

    June 18, 2021 at 7:15 am

    @Cameron: The Tarleton “no quarter” quarter.

  43. 43.

    debbie

    June 18, 2021 at 7:16 am

    Wow, “heritage” Americans. My mind is boggled.

  44. 44.

    Cameron

    June 18, 2021 at 7:22 am

    @Geminid: It’s a Bitcoin thing…..

  45. 45.

    Tony Jay

    June 18, 2021 at 8:27 am

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Ha! I was going for subtlety (who? me?) but I wish I’d worked that in.

  46. 46.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    June 18, 2021 at 8:50 am

    I thought the reference was to the Tarleton Twins in Gone with the Wind.  But I’ll go with the Brit Tarleton who was nicknamed Benny by American General Daniel Morgan during the Revolutionary War as Morgan whipped Benny bad at the battle of Cowpens.  Whichever reference, it’s the name of a loser.

  47. 47.

    H.E.Wolf

    June 18, 2021 at 9:18 am

    Good choice of surname for your racist character.

    https://fabricforcosplayers.com/tarlatan/

    “Tarlatan would be fun to use in zombie or ghost costumes” … and I bet it would make a good summer-weight KKK robe, too.

    (I’m also reminded of the aside in To Kill a Mockingbird: Naming people after Confederate generals makes slow, steady drinkers.)

  48. 48.

    Geminid

    June 18, 2021 at 9:49 am

     

    @Cheryl from Maryland: Like Ulysses Grant, Daniel Morgan had been a teamster in earlier life. Morgan’s victory at Cowpens was a turning point for the war in the South. Morgan captured most of Tarleton’s command, and Tarleton himself barely escaped after a close encounter with Colonel William Washington, a distant cousin of General Washington.

  49. 49.

    Uncle Cosmo

    June 18, 2021 at 10:39 am

    @Geminid: IIRC the Briti nasty in The Patriot who kills Mel Gibson’s character’s son (& is eventually killed in return) was rather closely & unflatteringly modeled on Banastre Tarleton.

    (FTR in S. M. Stirling’s alt-history Draka timeline, Tarleton in 1784 becomes the first C-in-C of the armed forces of the Crown Colony of Drakia. Appropriate appointment for a brutal slaveholding state that Stirling has described as an “anti-America” fanning out from South Africa to terrorize the planet.)

  50. 50.

    piratedan

    June 18, 2021 at 10:54 am

    @Cheryl from Maryland:  tbh, I thought that they were linking to the notorious cigarette manufacturer, tobacco=southern profit crop.

  51. 51.

    Tony Jay

    June 18, 2021 at 12:25 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    It’s the Drakaverse version of Tarleton I was thinking of when I took the name. Horrible universe that one, but some of Stirling’s best work. Guy certainly knew his audience back then.

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    June 18, 2021 at 1:31 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo: Have you read Freedom, by William Safire? The author gives a good narrative of events from Ft. Sumter to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, using several dozen historical figures. One of them is Marylander Anna Carroll, political operative and pampleteer. She advocates for the campaign up the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers that helps bring Tennessee under Union control, and (in the novel) counsels politicians such as Frank Blair Sr. and John Breckinride. Carroll had been influential in the recently disbanded American (Know Nothing) Party.

  53. 53.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    June 18, 2021 at 1:34 pm

    This legislation is the culmination of decades of efforts by the Left to prevent unashamed celebrations of our national story, heritage, and history.

    So… slavery isn’t something to be ashamed of? We should *celebrate* slavery? Or just blow it off? Damn it, once lies and partisanship trump truth and reasoning, people can’t even be *coherent*, much less “worth reading/listening to”.

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