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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Brava!

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Brava!

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Petula Dvorak, in the Washington Post — “An ode to those women who say what we’re thinking”:

There is something gratifying about the no-nonsense, fed up women who just let ’em have it.

This week has brought us two extraordinary examples. One called herself “Black Jesus” on Amtrak. The other is now trending on Twitter for her punchline to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin: #readtheroombuddy…

Thursday was when Stacey Patton, a.k.a. Black Jesus, made an appearance on the Northeast Regional headed to Trenton.

Patton, a journalism professor at Howard University, book author and frequent contributor to The Washington Post, was in business class on an Amtrak train from D.C. when she decided she’d had enough of The Guy.

You’ve seen him. Manspreading, maskless, perhaps, voice booming through the quiet of a train, Metro, bus, space…

“I’m about 8 rows behind him. He’s been on his cellphone since we boarded. He’s talking loud, as if he’s in his home office. Everyone else in the train car seems unbothered. But I’m annoyed…

“GIMME A SEC. GOT ANOTHER CALL COMIN’ THROUGH. YELLL-OOOO?”

I whisper. “Hello, this is Black Jesus calling. I’m riding on Northeast bound train 176. I hope y’all find the right interns for your search. You will make it to New Brunswick in time for that teams meeting. I also think your pitch for the new project, with some minor adjustments, will be well received by the rest of the team. And I recommend either the Frog and the Peach or Steakhouse 85 for dinner tonight. But for right now, Imma need you to lower your voice while riding this train. In my name, Amen.”

Click.

Dude actually stood up and looked around frantically. I kept looking at my computer like I’m not Black Jesus.”…

For the video of Ms. #ReadTheRoom, see the tweet at the top of my Coronavirus Update post, immediately below this one. But there’s more — you should definitely read the whole thing!

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  6. 6.

    Barbara

    @sab: I sat in the not quiet car on Amtrak pre-pandemic and heard two loud conversations in sufficient detail that I was able to trace two of the speakers and family members on the Internet and then find their social media accounts.

    I don’t understand how anybody could think their work related conversations would be private.  Just crazy.

  8. 8.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Barbara: During the nicer months, some of my neighbors have loud, personal phone calls on the back porches.

    Glad you have a doctor’s appointment.  Is it for your loud mouth-itis?

  14. 14.

    sab

    @mrmoshpotato: They often do

    Back pre-Covid we used to hear a lot of loud business calls at baseball games. Pay attention, guy! There are balls coming into the stands!

  17. 17.

    JMG

    @Barbara: In the summer of 2019 I was taking a 7 subway train to the US Open in Flushing Meadows and heard an extended phone conversation by a Mets scout on his way to nearby Citi Field in which their minor league pitchers were evaluated, loudly. The kind of operational security to be expected from that franchise, but really, even for baseball that’s dumb.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    AL thanks for the WaPo story.  It’s good.  I hope that #ReadTheRoomBuddy woman gets visibility too if she wants it (the story says she’s known for other good things).

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  19. 19.

    Spanky

    In other news, it looks like the Shootings Fairy is revisiting some old haunts:

    One person killed and 2 wounded in shooting inside a church in Aurora, Colorado, police say

     

    1 killed, 4 others injured in shooting at a hookah lounge near Virginia Tech’s main campus, police say

    Both via CNN.

  21. 21.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    In less happy news, a judge temporarily stopped Gov. Pritzker’s mask mandate for schools. My teacher DIL is going to be distraught. She already has kindergarteners out sick with covid, one of them quite sick. And she herself is immuno compromised. I assume she’ll keep wearing her mask, but this is not good.

  23. 23.

    Starfish

    @sab: She was much more elegant than I was. I had a loud talker behind me on a bus, and I just told her about how obnoxious she was being and how we did not all want to hear her conversation.

  24. 24.

    p.a.

    The Venn diagram of the “900,000+ American dead, no big whoop, mah freedumbs” people  and the  “let’s commit genocide because 7 drunks somewhere burned an American flag” people is 2 100% overlapping circles.

  25. 25.

    germy

    If you see someone shoplifting, stop them. If the police won’t stop them, you should. Don’t tolerate disorder, chaos, and evil in your neighborhood pic.twitter.com/uAFBLuNC9m

    — Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 1, 2022

    Tackling a shoplifter so that Alice Walton can get away with her 7th pedestrian fatality DUI

    — NOT Sean P McCarthy (@NOTSeanMcCarthy) February 4, 2022

    honestly this is what most america conservatism boils down to, do anything u can to protect walmart https://t.co/rN1MVjvZ4V

    — Richard Juul (@YSufferer) February 4, 2022

  29. 29.

    randy khan

    @Barbara:

    I sat behind someone who is in my field on an Amtrak train to New York once, and he spent big chunks of the trip doing work calls.  We happened to be on the same team (so to speak) on the issues he was talking about, but if we weren’t it could have been a big problem for him.  (At least it wasn’t the quiet car.)

    It’s remarkable how many people don’t realize that they can be heard in public spaces.

  31. 31.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: One would think your DIL could insist on masking at least in her own classroom just under “reasonable accomodation” for her immunocompromised condition.

  34. 34.

    Ken

    @randy khan: It’s remarkable how many people don’t realize that they can be heard in public spaces.

    I vaguely remember a psychological study that indicated when people are on a phone call, they blank out their surroundings; it’s as if they were alone in a room with the person on the other end. Which is one of the reasons that using the phone while driving is so dangerous.

  35. 35.

    randy khan

    I suspect that Youngkin thinks he won that encounter.  As a cuddly moderate Republican (*cough*), he can’t wear a mask anywhere because it would enrage the base, so he’s probably hoping he will come off as a brave truth-teller.

    But what I think he doesn’t get is that he won the election, in part, because he convinced a fraction of the voters in northern Virginia that he actually would be a cuddly moderate.  Stuff like this (including the anti-masks-in-schools executive order he issued his first day in office) hurts him because it tells them that he was lying during the campaign.  He can’t be unelected, and he can’t run for reelection, but it makes it harder for him to push his agenda and risks turning the 2023 legislative elections into a referendum on him that he will lose.  And since the awful Republican gerrymander from the 2010 census is going to be gone, those elections may be an uphill battle already.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    One of the few joys left to me in post-Trump American politics is schadenfreude when Trump spurns a pol who is an imitator. And the more simpering and obsequious the imitator, the greater the schadenfreude when the orange fart rejects or ignores them. According to the Daily Beast, that is the fate so far of U.S. senate candidate from Ohio Josh Mandel:

    There are a few key reasons why the twice-impeached former president hasn’t yet endorsed Mandel or anybody else in that race. One reason for the hold-up is that Trump—who has long been addicted to dishing tabloid-style gossip and dirt—has for months told people close to him that he thinks Mandel is a charisma-free weirdo and dork, according to three sources who’ve spoken to Trump about Mandel and the Ohio contest since last year.

    In recent months, these sources said, the onetime leader of the free world has even spent an inordinate amount of time gossiping with a large array of advisers and close associates about unconfirmed details of Mandel’s sex life. Trump has privately regurgitated, often in disgust, a wide range of unverified, often completely unvetted, and lurid rumors about the MAGA candidate.

    The salacious gossip has frequently found its way to Mar-a-Lago, and wherever else Trump and his political orbit roam, because Republicans opposed to Mandel have actively pushed rumors to Trump, Ohio political circles, and reporters at major news outlets, the sources independently said.

    “The [former] president has used the term ‘fucking weird’ to describe Josh Mandel more than once, when I have spoken to him about” Mandel, one of the people said. “He has talked about [Mandel] and sex in the same sentence more times than I would have liked to hear.”

    Emphasis mine. I think more Republicans should feed Trump gossipy rumors about rival MAGAs. Ideally, a squishy dope who wants to take out a more powerful potential rival, say Marco Rubio vs. Ron DeSantis, will concoct salacious rumors that play on Trump’s most hysterical anti-kink impulses.

  39. 39.

    different-church-lady

    Loud, obnoxious cell phone calls in public are so last decade. Now it’s loud, obnoxious Zoom meetings in public.

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: I always wonder about people who become obsessed with the sex lives of others. It always seems to indicate envy or desire, more often than not, both.

  42. 42.

    M31

    had a great time in the ‘quiet’ Amtrak car once, a guy was calling all his friends and work acquaintances to apologize for all his drunk phone calls late the night before

    “hey man, uh, sorry about that, uh, must have had a few too many, know what I mean, uh”

    lol a guy like that all his exes already have him blocked

  43. 43.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Betty Cracker:

    the onetime leader of the free world has even spent an inordinate amount of time gossiping with a large array of advisers and close associates about unconfirmed details of Mandel’s sex life

    Frankly, I didn’t think Angela Merkel cared that much.

  48. 48.

    There go two miscreants

    Happy to add my voice to those welcoming you back, Amir! I hope that whatever kept you away did not leave any lingering negative consequences.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    @Gin & Tonic: Ha! The phrase has long grated on me. It was always arrogant (even when arguably true), but Trump made it ridiculous. Good excuse to retire it forever.

  54. 54.

    geg6

    More bridge news from Pittsburgh.  The Saw Mill Run Bridge, major artery for commuters from Mount Washington and the South Hills to the city by busway and light rail, has been closed by the Port Authority because engineers inspecting it found it had shifted.  Another 79s era bridge falling apart.  How many of the hundreds of bridges in the city have these issues?

  58. 58.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Someone told me about a murder mystery writer on a train, talking to his agent about how he planned to kill a character. Other riders were so concerned that police met him at the next stop.

    That sounds like a beginning to a good murder mystery.

  59. 59.

    A Ghost to Most

    Sorry to intrude, but a remarkable thing is happening in the WaPo comments. Something I have not seen in nearly five years of almost daily commenting there. The right wing commenters have gone almost silent. This means something.

    Carry on.

  62. 62.

    rosalind

    Flashing back to jury duty downtown L.A.: walked over to Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to grab lunch at the cafe. Sat down on a quiet bench in their very quiet garden. Enter man talking loudly on his cell. Sat next to me, and I realized with increasing horror he was conducting a counseling session. From his side of the conversation he revealed deeply private things about the woman on the other end. He ignored my looks of disbelief, and I finally got up and left I was so uncomfortable.

  65. 65.

    Yarrow

    @Betty Cracker:

    One of the few joys left to me in post-Trump American politics is schadenfreude when Trump spurns a pol who is an imitator

    Agree with this. It’s one of the few entertaining things left to watch. Wondering what those rumors are about Mandel that the orange traitor finds so weird. Does he not fuck enough strippers or something?

  66. 66.

    cain

    @Barbara: My (ex) sister-in-law told me a story about how they were on an amtrak and a bunch of Indians were playing  Antakshari quite loudly. When someone tried to tell them they were being loud they pulled the race card on them.

    They were lucky I was not there, as I would have told them to shut the fuck up, and that pulling a race card is an insult to actual racism that is out there. They can’t pull the race card on me.

  70. 70.

    NotMax

    Brava!

    Other side of the coin: when the reviews are, um, less than laudatory.

    “It’s remarkably oily,” said Kelly. “It’s gross. It tastes like drinking fat. It, like, slid down my throat. It felt like it went down in one solid glop.” Others agreed.

    “That doesn’t disappoint, in terms of what I was expecting,” he added.

    I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone describe vodka as having a “gloppy” texture, but he wasn’t wrong.…
    [snip]
    After we tipped our shot glasses, Shure noted the shocking difference between the two vodkas. This one, unlike the first, wasn’t sugary or “gloppy.”
    [snip]
    “And it’s a little less grotesque,” Kelly said. “Like, [it doesn’t have] this-is-what-the-orcs-drink-in-Mordor vibes to it.”… Source

    :)

  78. 78.

    cain

    @jnfr:

    That was epic. Glad to have seen that. What happened there was complete bullshit. A man lost his life for doing nothing more than sleeping on a couch. Sneaking into the room all silent and stuff. Assholes.

  79. 79.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    he thinks Mandel is a charisma-free weirdo and dork

    Oh, even worse. He knows he’s a Jew.

    Trump apparently favors Mike Gibbons and has convinced Bernie Moreno (“I’m the right kind of immigrant!”) to drop out of the race.

    Yay for Ohio. ?

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @A Ghost to Most: The right wing commenters have gone almost silent. This means something.

    The Ministry of Truth has recalled their scripts about the disastrous Biden jobs report, and the new talking points haven’t been sent out yet?

  85. 85.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: Not my state so I haven’t followed the race closely and have never heard of Gibbons, but I was thinking it might be good for Dems if Mandel is the GOP nominee. He seems horrible enough to lose. Maybe Gibbons is just as bad?

  86. 86.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I love the Amtrak story. I’ve shared a train car with That Guy way too many times.

  87. 87.

    germy

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Luckovich is brilliant as a caricaturist.  Lots of political cartoonists don’t have that skill.   He’s great usually, but every time someone famous dies he invariably does an “arriving at the pearly gates” cartoon.

  89. 89.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think he is as bad. He’s an ex-pro footballer and businessman, and his tagline at the end of his latest campaign ad excoriating Dems for the pandemic and China is “Let’s get them back.”

    Bet that’s what attracted TFG’s attention.

  91. 91.

    The Moar You Know

    If you see someone shoplifting, stop them. If the police won’t stop them, you should. Don’t tolerate disorder, chaos, and evil in your neighborhood

    @germy: I used to work retail, 20 years ago.  This runs directly counter to the VERY specific instructions employees and management are given at every retail chain in America, as doing so is the number one way that employees end up getting shot, stabbed, or beaten to death.  Same goes for bystanders.  Just don’t do it.

  92. 92.

    Mike E

    @Amir Khalid: Cheers for Amir! If you haven’t already, check out Chris Buck on YouTube and his Friday Fretworks (if it’s available in your region) this young man puts in the work evaluating lots of gear and is quite the gifted player

  93. 93.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @NotMax: ​
     “Like, [it doesn’t have] this-is-what-the-orcs-drink-in-Mordor vibes to it.”

    I’ll take “words you don’t expect in a food review” for $500, Alex.

  98. 98.

    Geminid

    @debbie: One factor affecting Trump’s endorsements is that he’s afraid of endorsing a loser. Reports are that he has even considered hedging his bets by endorsing two candidates in a race. Another problem is that lot of his henchman are on the payrolls of opposing campaigns, and he doesn’t know who to trust. Trump is too lazy to do extensive research on his own.

    How potent a Trump endorsement can be is an open question. North Carolina ex-Governor Pat McCrory is still leading Trump-endorsed Ted Budd in the Senate primary race (Budd is also backed by the Club for Growth). And so far Georgia Governor is leading David Perdue, Trump’s endorsee, in the primary race there.

  100. 100.

    debbie

    @Geminid:

    I forgot to mention Rand Paul also starred in another campaign ad for Gibbons, endorsing him and promising that together, they would make sure Fauci was fired.

    I’m thinking the election will definitely go to Gibbons.

  102. 102.

    Brachiator

    @cain:

    My (ex) sister-in-law told me a story about how they were on an amtrak and a bunch of Indians were playing  Antakshari quite loudly.

    Back when I had a long commute, there was always a car of the MetroLink train that was designated as a Quiet Car.

    But elsewhere it is always a pain when people want to treat public spaces as though they are at home.

  103. 103.

    Brachiator

    @Geminid:

    Trump is too lazy to do extensive research on his own.

    “Extensive research.” That’s funny. Trump is too lazy to read anything much longer than a Twitter message.

    I wonder how literate he really is. His primary method of research seems to be watching TV, especially Fox News.

  106. 106.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator: What’s this “read” you speak of??

    NPR.org:

    [TFG] has boasted of his religious credentials, but there have been some missteps along the way. Last year, he told an Iowa evangelical gathering he had never asked God for forgiveness — a central tenet of the Christian faith — and he repeated that Sunday on CNN. He’s declined to cite his favorite Bible verse or even his favorite testament. And the Presbyterian church he says he attends in Manhattan has said he’s not an active member.

    Those discrepancies haven’t mattered yet to many evangelicals, and also didn’t seem to faze many Liberty students either.

    They don’t care. Nothing but tribalism and power matters to the RWNJs. We shouldn’t take what they profess seriously, either.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  108. 108.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    [TFG] has boasted of his religious credentials, but there have been some missteps along the way. Last year, he told an Iowa evangelical gathering he had never asked God for forgiveness

    However, Trump has been known to call God a loser for failing to include a golf course and a Trump Tower in the Garden of Eden.

    Those discrepancies haven’t mattered yet to many evangelicals, and also didn’t seem to faze many Liberty students either.

    There was some recent GOP gathering where everyone continued to praise Trump despite his sedition and disdain for supposed core conservative principles.

    It is almost comical to see how tribal support for Trump has become.

  109. 109.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I still can’t believe people are taking the side of the virus.

    Hope your DiL’s school district isn’t in a numbskull, “But mah freedumb!” part of the state.

  111. 111.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    @A Ghost to Most: Rapture? Covid taking out the rest of the antivaxxers?

    Either one would work for me. I’ve long held that if everyone who believes in the Rapture were to get Raptured, America would instantly be a much better and happier place.

    “But those were going to be my followers!” cries a disappointed Antichrist.

  112. 112.

    artem1s

    @Brachiator:

    Those discrepancies haven’t mattered yet to many evangelicals, and also didn’t seem to faze many Liberty students either.

    yea, not true. another bit of NPR misinformation to send the Liberty students’ protest against TFG down the memory hole. There were a lot of LU students who made waves over Falwell, Jr. playing footsie with TFG. The board and CEO were the ones who weren’t fazed. $$$$ means more to televangelists than the state of their souls.

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @artem1s:

    yea, not true. another bit of NPR misinformation to send the Liberty students’ protest against TFG down the memory hole. There were a lot of LU students who made waves over Falwell, Jr. playing footsie with TFG.

    I was quoting another commenter, but good point.

    I wonder how many voting students actually abandoned Trump.

  114. 114.

    Geminid

    @Brachiator: Trump mainly relies on other people’s advocacy. That can be problematic in cases like the Pennsylvania Senate race, where Hope Hicks and Steven Miller work for hedge fund manager David McCormick, while Sean Hannity is a supporter of celebrity Doctor Oz. Between Hicks, Miller and Hannity, who are you gonna believe?

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