Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

After roe, women are no longer free.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Republicans in disarray!

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Saturday Evening Open Thread: FTFNYT

Saturday Evening Open Thread: FTFNYT

by | 152 Comments

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Amanda Hess, ‘Critic’s Notebook’, because hating on other women is always a meal ticket:

… Before the sign was everywhere, it was outside the home of Kristin Garvey, a librarian in Wisconsin. In what she has called a postelection “fog,” Garvey took a Sharpie to poster board, scrawled a range of social-justice slogans into that now-ubiquitous list and planted it in her yard. Soon a photograph of the sign hit Facebook and went viral. With the help of a redesign from a professional artist (who rendered its words in rainbow letters on a black background) and a boost from Pantsuit Nation (the online hive of Hillary Clinton supporters), its message became a mantra among liberals who felt lost in Trump’s America…

Buying the official “In This House” sign, at least, directly benefits a specific cause. The license for the design has been gifted to a small Wisconsin reproductive health nonprofit, which collects proceeds from sales through online retailers like Zazzle and CafePress. Beyond this transactional relationship, the sign’s message drives to a perplexingly apolitical conclusion. With its exhaustive list of allied issues, it resembles a multipurpose kitchen gadget — it can chop, it can dice, but often it sits in the drawer unused. Listing all the social-justice slogans together nods to a careful effort at inclusivity, but it also diffuses the sign owner’s perceived responsibility to engage in any particular movement. The kicker, “Kindness Is Everything,” assures the owner that the real key to change lies within. The important thing is that a person be the kind of person who would display the sign.

This is the epitome of virtue signaling: an actual sign enumerating the owner’s virtues. There is something refreshing, actually, about the straightforwardness of that. Whenever I spy one in a window or on a lawn, I feel mildly annoyed and begrudgingly impressed…

Inclusivity! Reproductive rights! Virtue signalling, ugh! You can practically hear Hess’s eyes rolling.

Reader Interactions

152Comments

  3. 3.

    Raoul Paste

    Leave it to the New York Times to over analyse and trash a sign that basically supports decency and reality

  4. 4.

    Betty

    Virtue signaling , snowflake cancel culture. All this just so they don’t have to engage in genuine analysis. Just give it a label and dismiss it.

  5. 5.

    JCJ

    Whenever I spy one in a widow or on a lawn I think “oh good.  That person is not an asshole.”

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    @JCJ: Yeah. There’s a BLM sign on a cul-de-sac we walk on, where it’s outnumbered by numerous thin-blue-line flags, and I always have warm thoughts toward the owner.

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Pantsuit Nation (the online hive of Hillary Clinton supporters)

    Hive? Hive? HIVE?
    FTFNYT indeed. Sideways, upside-down, and backwards.

  9. 9.

    eddie blake

    besides krugman, goldberg, bouie and (occasionally) blow, i’ve got ABSOLUTELY no use for the times. when i was younger, they pissed me off so often i would rattle out a protest letter to them pretty much every week or so for about four years. figured they hadda eddie blake file, where they just threw all the letters into, “dammit, here’s another by that crackpot, blake!”

    i DID get published on the letters page once, when the paper tried to blame slow bus speeds on the PASSENGERS instead of the goddamn MTA, who was setting the routes and the timing constraints…

    fucking bus drivers were stopping at GREEN lights to make their schedule work…. great for the driver. shitty for the people trying to get to their appointments or their JOBS on time…

    goddamn, i HATE the ny times. they are the WORST. at least with the post, you KNOW what you’re getting.

    eta– oooh, NINTH!!!

  10. 10.

    Damien

    Why? Just WHY is it necessary to shit on an incredibly mild and basically human expression of views?

    Jesus, NYT. The only paper salty enough to preserve the fish wrapped in it

  11. 11.

    Woodrow/asim

    Everything “Conservative” boils down to never feeling “cool,” feeling conformable in one’s skin.

    That’s why they can’t write not just jokes, but create damn near any Art — Art (at least good Art) requires you to actually understand yourself on some level, and all of this is aggressively above avoiding that, and blaming others for not creating for them (which sounds…a lot like various versions, across cultures, of so-called Noble classes.)

    And when someone, some group, does express comfort, joy, happiness? These folx try to steal it — steal their art, their culture, their livelihoods, and their actual freedoms — while demanding we only acknowledge their version of all the above.

    Only Conservative Virtues really matter, Only Dog Whistling is valid.

  16. 16.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Getting ready to go to Strange Science: Into the Shadows at the Huntington Gardens. Should be fun and it’s not to hot today so it will have a much more Fall kinda vibe.  I’m dressing up in faux-Victorian with a vest, bowler hat, cane etc., and a twirly mustache covid mask.  Vaccine -required!  From the Huntington tickets page:

    Enter a dark Victorian landscape and explore peculiar pastimes and creepy characters through live theatrical performances, electrifying presentations, and special displays of rarely seen objects from our vaults.

  17. 17.

    eclare

    I am a middle aged white woman, and I have no idea what that article purports to say.  I’m supposed to hate people who think “love is love”?  Or question their motivations for putting out a sign that says that?

    It is just made up bullshit.

  18. 18.

    dopey-o

    My spouse took down my “Trump / Putin 2020” flag, and replaced it with one of those signs last year. Much less provocative toward any feral trumpers passing thru the neighborhood.

    Smaller print, multi-syllabic words, complete sentences.

  20. 20.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @eddie blake: They are also supposed to revere Blue Lives, yet most of them adamantly object to vaccine requirements for Police despite Covid being the #1 cause of death of police.

  21. 21.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @eclare: I am a middle aged white woman, and I have no idea what that article purports to say.

    I’m not familiar with Hess, but that piece strikes me as taking a couple of hundred words to say “Okay, Boomer”.

  22. 22.

    eclare

    @UncleEbeneezer:  Got my covid booster and flu vax today (yay!).  Guy and his wife waiting in line with me, he is retired military.  He said he does not understand people not getting vaccinated, it’s what he grew up with.

    They were cute, guy had his Manila folder with their cards, etc.

  25. 25.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Also, virtue signaling is absolutely a good thing.  I want my Black, Latinx, Undocumented, LGBTQ, Trans, Muslim friends/neighbors to know I have their backs in a time of crisis and am always proud to speak up for them when I get opportunities to do so.  If my sign or tee shirt or whatever gives them just a minute or two of comfort knowing they don’t have to worry about me calling the police or Ice on them, or dead-name/misgender them or mocking their religion etc., then  that signaling is completely justified.

  26. 26.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @eclare: me too, on both counts, but nobody ever seems to notice us in the Great War of the Generations

    I, for one, am okay with this.

  28. 28.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @eclare: Seriously.  It’s weird that people like my Dad pestered me endlessly about making sure I always get my yearly physical/check-up, presumably so I could FOLLOW the advice of the doctor, but now he refuses to get vaccinated.  Ugh.

    Congrats on your double-day of jabs.  Hope they don’t hit you too hard.  We felt pretty crappy for about 48 hours.

  31. 31.

    eclare

    @UncleEbeneezer:  I slept for about two days straight after the second Moderna.  As an insomniac, I kind of liked this side effect!

    I did go buy easy microwaveable food yesterday, in case that happened again.

  32. 32.

    scott (the other one)

    We moved from a reddish suburb of San Diego to Portland about six months into TFG’s first term. Our first full day here, our daughters, then 16, 19 and 22, went for a walk to check out the new neighborhood. They came back an hour later, overjoyed at having seen many of those kinds of signs, and how much better it felt to be living in a place where those kinds of signs were common.

    FTFNYT is what I’m saying.

  33. 33.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @eclare: Me too.  I didn’t sleep for two days straight but I did take naps and actually slept better at night with lots of crazy dreams.

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @eddie blake: (and speaking of women who hate women) I started compulsively reading op/eds online in the run-up to the Iraq War and kept it up for a while. I regularly read Maureen Dowd– who I thought was pretty good on GW Bush– up until she started writing about the ’08 Dem primary as “Obambi and the Dominatrix”. I still can’t believe that not only did no editor put a stop to that, she has no one in her life to tell her she was saying more about herself than Obama or Clinton.

    A couple of months ago she had a headline that seemed favorable to Biden– who she does like– so I skimmed it. At least half of it she used to express her still-seething hatred of Obama.

  37. 37.

    Mike in NC

    Anybody know of trick-or-treaters planning to dress up as the Evil Clown? Referring not to Pennywise, but Trump.

  44. 44.

    Dan B

    Here in this 15% white neighborhood – 85% Black, Filipine/x, Vietnamese, Hmong, Somali, etc. – there are none of those signs.  Friends in other parts of town say it’s a sign the neighborhood is or has gentrified.  I believe the signs are a way to say: Straight but not narrow, white but not bigoted, etc.  Sometimes it comes across tinged with some guilt at being privileged but I hope it’s more often simply:  We love our diverse neighborhood.  We have some new neighbors who’ve purchased renovated 50’s and 70’s homes for $700K.  Three years ago houses averaged $400K.  With $100K of remodeling they were $500K.  Our neighbors to the north, northwest, and west are very old with many heirs so we may be surrounded by white upper middle class tech money very soon.  We’ll be looking for the signs.

  46. 46.

    mali muso

    Sipping a nightcap, made up of random things in my kitchen.  A shot of bourbon, a dash of bitters, a dollop of maple syrup, a splash of carbonated water and an ice cube.

    I don’t get the hate towards the love is love signs either.  I do know that I flip off the house that I pass every day that still flies a TFG flag.  Good to know who the assholes in the neighborhood are.

  47. 47.

    CaseyL

    @UncleEbeneezer: That sounds like a great way to spend the evening!  Pity it’s all the way down in California: it’s just the kind of thing I could be coaxed out of the house for.

  48. 48.

    Steeplejack

    Frankenfest on TCM tonight!

    8:00 EDT: Frankenstein (1931).
    9:30 EDT: Young Frankenstein (1974).

    Bonus: Cat People (1942) as a palate-cleanser at midnight.

  49. 49.

    Suzanne

    I will note that my new neighborhood in PGH had plenty of those signs, as did a lot of other neighborhoods in the city. Also a few Thin Blue Line, and a few Trump signs, but a lot of left-leaning signs. It is, of course, a way of establishing a semiotic norm for the neighborhood. I don’t have one, but I like seeing them. When I was evaluating places to live, I definitely looked hard for things like that.

    It’s a way of low-key intimidating the Trumpy people, letting them know that they are not dominant. I support that.

  53. 53.

    CaseyL

    I see those signs as a sincere declaration of attitude, but also a little bit as tribal identifiers. Like @Suzanne, I take notice of the neighborhoods where they appear, and definitely feel something inside relax when I see them.

    (One of the units in my townhouse complex has a bright red neon #BLM in their window, which I get a kick out of because it a) looks like something from a bar; and b) Is easily visible from the street – not easy to do, as we’re set back quite a bit from the street.

    (I don’t have any signs because I never have put up signs, for anything, ever.  Don’t know why; just never felt like doing so.)

  55. 55.

    Raven

    Did ya’ll see these stickers on a car in downtown Panama City?

     

    https://flic.kr/p/2mESUNK

     

    We went to an antique shop were the lady asked people to mask because her hubby is immunocompromised. She has suffered all kinds of threats and insults.

  56. 56.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @eddie blake: One of the reasons I haven’t had a haircut since before the pandemic started was that the place I would go to was posting some of that on their Facebook page (pre-insurrection). I don’t know if I should go back there or not.

  58. 58.

    Middlelee

    @Steeplejack:

    Thanks.  I found a less expensive one on that Amazon page and it’s in my cart.

    My friends would be less surprised to see a sign that said, “You know the kitchen is only this clean because I invited you over.”

  59. 59.

    HumboldtBlue

    My eldest sister has one of those signs and she’s an absolutely amazing human being. So I’ll take her sign over some tired-ass columnist. How tedious. They sure as shit miss the clusterfuck that was the Trump admin.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Note the sound is way out of sync on the clip linked for Frankenstein. Not the case with the complete version on Prime.

  61. 61.

    mrmoshpotato

    This is the epitome of virtue signaling: an actual sign enumerating the owner’s virtues. There is something refreshing, actually, about the straightforwardness of that. Whenever I spy one in a window or on a lawn, I feel mildly annoyed and begrudgingly impressed…

    Apparently the fucking New York Times can both-sides anything!

    “Good fucking grief!” exclaimed grown-up Charlie Brown.

    Go Penn State!

     

  63. 63.

    Benw

    I reckon the Braves should just win this one and not mess around with all this “tied Series” tomfoolery.

    Go Braves!

  73. 73.

    Mike in NC

    Our rotten media is as fixated on Joe Manshit right now as it once was for an NYC real estate swindler in debt to Russian oligarchs.

  74. 74.

    Geminid

    @Baud: My Atlanta friend lives a few miles from the stadium. I told him that tonight his neighborhood would be haunted by a Jackass-o-Lantern.

  75. 75.

    prostratedragon

    @NotMax: ​ Was just surveying the damage in mine and thinking something much like that. I should get me a sign.
    &nbsp

  77. 77.

    Jackie

    @Baud: I read he invited himself. Hopefully the network cameras ignore him. Or he gets roundly booed like at the Nats game a few years back.

  82. 82.

    Peale

    Yeah. I mean my neighbour’s car has Trump stickers and snake flags all over it and the last time I spoke with him he was trying to convince me that hospitals were falsely reporting COVID deaths to get more money. But we really need to question those Love Lives Here signs.

  86. 86.

    phdesmond

    @mrmoshpotato:

    i am reminded of a ditty which could be a century old by now:

    Rooty toot toot!  Rooty toot toot!
    We are the girls from the institute.
    We don’t smoke and we don’t chew,
    And we don’t go with boys who do.

  88. 88.

    Mary G

    There must have been a TFG rally at the beach near my house. I actually saw one of the giant pickup trucks go by with two humongous flags flying. One FUCK BIDEN the other TFG2024. On my own street! Grrr.

    And just now ten or so cars have rumbled angrily past. Each and every one ran the stop sign at the blind intersection 30 yards from my house. It was hard not to wish for injuries.

  89. 89.

    Chip Daniels

    There’s that Arendt quote about how the fascists believe in everything and nothing, and celebrate cynicism.

    Cynicism always supports the oppressor, even if it makes superficial sneers at “both sides”. Tolerance and liberalism and justice demands our sincerity and engagement.

  96. 96.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Madison is, of course, full of these signs. Usually in well-off white neighborhoods. I see nothing wrong with people proclaiming that they are not assholes. To me, that is all the signs say. Here in Madison, there is no real risk in making such a statement publicly, but I don’t think that should count against anyone.

  97. 97.

    Ksmiami

    If we do end up getting a National divorce- can we move and rename the soon to be former NY Times into the Bumfuck nowhere paper of record.???

  100. 100.

    Steeplejack

    @Anyway:

    TCM shovels in some less-seen but worthy films during these theme events. The Fly is another one that has been overshadowed by the remake.

    Carnival of Souls (1962) is a good one, on at 4:30 a.m. EDT. Cat People is on again at 10:00 a.m. EDT Sunday. And Karl Freund’s Mad Love (1935) with Peter Lorre is on at 12:45 p.m. EDT Sunday. I always remember that one because it plays a small part in Malcolm Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano.

  102. 102.

    phdesmond

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    more grist for the thesis might be this similarly old poem from eastern Mass.:

    “Lynn, Lynn, the city of sin,

    you’ll never come out the way you went in,

    what looks like gold is really tin,

    the girls say ‘no’ but they’ll give in.”

  103. 103.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, they just mentioned that Trump is in attendance at the Dodgers-Braves game and showed him and Melania for about five seconds. About as minimal an announcement as you could ask for (aside from none).

    ETA: “They” = TV announcers. No announcement in the stadium that I have seen.

  104. 104.

    topclimber

    The only time I got the virtue signalling crack was from my Q-wannabe nephew. When I told him I preferred it to sleaze signalling from TFG, he shut up.

    Mildly woke am I, and proud of it!

  105. 105.

    Jay

    Here, in YVA, the most common political sign on vehicles is “Farmers Matter”. It’s in reference to the Farmers Protests in India. Got one up on the back wall behind the cash, beside the empty chair with the red robe, and children’s shoes.

  110. 110.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @phdesmond: And you reminded me of this little cheer attributed to the Norfolk Girls’ Academy:

    We don’t smoke! We don’t drink!
    Norfolk! Norfolk! Norfolk! Yay! 

    :^D

  112. 112.

    West of the Rockies

    Where is the FTFNYT article on the Don’t Tread on Me flags and the Fuck Your Feelings tee-shirts favored by Repubs?

  113. 113.

    dnfree

    @phdesmond:

    Rooty toot toot! Rooty toot toot!
    We are the girls from the institute.
    We don’t smoke and we don’t chew,
    And we don’t go with boys who do.

    When I was in college in the 1960s, when girls still had “hours”, my roommate and I were looking for off-campus housing, where we had to have house mothers. One potential landlady asked us suspiciously if we smoked or drank. We assured her we did not. “I don’t rent to girls who smoke or drink”, she told us menacingly. “Last year I rented to two girls who told me they didn’t smoke or drink, and I found out later they did all three!”

    We didn’t rent there.

  121. 121.

    realbtl

    OK Colorado School of Mines circa 1967- surprise surprise almost all male student body.

    Rah Mines!

    Rah mines!

    Mines rah, hows yours?

  123. 123.

    debbie

    @Raven:

    If that car’s in Georgia, I’m surprised not to see any dents or other damage.

    My windshield was smashed in New Hampshire because my bumper sticker supported the Timberlane teachers’ strike.

  124. 124.

    Raven

    @Steeplejack:

    He was seated in an open-air suite down the right field line at Truist Park, arriving in public view about 15 minutes before first pitch, standing for the national anthem alongside his wife, Melania.

    Herschel Walker, the former Heisman Trophy winner whose bid for a Georgia senate seat is backed by Trump, was also in the suite.

     

  138. 138.

    Mike in NC

    @phdesmond: I can recall a Boston area radio station joke about an advertiser called “Tom’s Tool” in Lynn. They said that the previous night Tom’s Tool was in Sharon. Yuck yuck yuck.

  139. 139.

    Another Scott

    [TFG] claimed Manfred and Randy Levine, President of the Yankees, invited him to the game tonight. Both the league and Levine are saying left and right off the record that's not true. The Braves have [TFG] calling the league office and asking to come. https://t.co/EMvn7Tql1V

    — Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) October 31, 2021

    Well known lying liar TFG tells story. Who to believe??! ‘Tis a mystery!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  142. 142.

    Ladyracterinok

    @phdesmond:

    When I was In college at Rice from fall of 57 to spring of 61, the girls sang this with an added last line — “And do we have fun? H**l NO!!!”

    At that time Rice’s official name was Rice Institute

  145. 145.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Spanky:

    “Don Jr. opened the door, wearing a Yankee jersey,” Scott Melker, one of his former classmates, wrote on Facebook last year, describing what happened on one occasion when Trump came to take his son to a Yankees game. “Without saying a word, his father slapped him across the face, knocking him to the floor in front of all of his classmates. He simply said “put on a suit and meet me outside,’ and closed the door.” (The Trumps have denied this account.)

  148. 148.

    Kay

    There are about 14,000 public school districts in the US. They have about 50 million students. If this is how we’re going to set public education policy, by picking out one incident in one district and pretending it somehow applies in some general, societal way to all public schools we are going to be wildly off track.

    They couldn’t even get the basic facts right in the one incident. They now want to apply it across the board?

    That’s why panics are bad, why relying on them makes bad laws and policies and why bad people take advantage of them and use them for their own purposes. This panic will result in garbage. They always do. They’ll be dumb, unenforceable laws like the laws banning books or “banning CRT” and a bunch of innocent people will get smeared and when the panic subsides people will quietly clean up the damage and the mob will move on to the next panic.

  149. 149.

    Ruckus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I’m trying to put my finger on what Maureen has against President Obama. He’s well educated, well spoken, photographs well, did the job of president well…. It’s really a head scratcher it is. I wonder if the obvious might be the issue, she’s a racist twat.

    Notice in the years I’ve been here I don’t normally use that word, don’t believe I’ve ever typed it out on this blog, but it is just what popped into my mind when you mentioned her name.

  150. 150.

    Steeplejack

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Haven’t seen it. I thought it was a great novel but doubted whether it would make a good movie. Don’t know anything about the 1984 one.

    Hmm, IMDB says Finney got an Oscar nomination. Might have to look it up.

    . . . And it appears to be on HBO Max, which I have.

  152. 152.

    sab

    @Ruckus: Stop the “twat” talk. We know what it means and if you had been using the “c” word you’d have been banned. I know how outraging Miss Dowd is, but as a person of her gender that line if attack is still offensive. to many of the rest of us.

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