In the words of George W. Bush, that was some weird shit https://t.co/YqYvfzH16Z
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) May 31, 2022
Sarah Palin lost her bid for a new trial in her libel case against The New York Times. A judge ruled that she had failed to produce “even a speck” of evidence to prove the newspaper had defamed her in a 2017 editorial. https://t.co/fCeia4GPZo
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 1, 2022
welcome to the boob report. i'm your host, rod dreher, author of the benedict option pic.twitter.com/895N60mJto
— flglmn (@flglmn) May 31, 2022
In the Benedict Option, “Dreher argues for the formation of virtuous Christian communities in response to an increasingly secular culture”…
zhena gogolia
He videotaped women’s boobs in the airport?
zhena gogolia
Johnny depp won, in case anybody cares
Tony Jay
If America decides to invade Canada and defeats the military, Canadians are going to be powerless to stop them.
Ian Miles Chong (his father must be so ashamed) didn’t need to add any more to that statement.
And re: Dreher the Devout Dick, his wife recently dumped his well-flagellated ass. He’s feeling the loss of his ‘every third Tuesday five-minute Funtime’.
debbie
Abbott’s clearly learned…something.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Canada still has its geese.
Gravenstone
What’s Seb trying to show?
Baud
@debbie:
Oooh. I hope he pairs that with arming the teachers.
Gravenstone
@debbie: So, they’re going to randomly intrude into schools, to test if they’re ready for random intruders? This won’t end well…
debbie
@Gravenstone:
Well, it’s not like anyone’s finished grieving or anything… //
Ken
All I can say in response to that picture of Sarah Palin is “Don’t you think she looks… tired?”
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
speaking of libel cases, a case we’ve all been following:
debbie
@Baud:
Ohio just passed a law to train teachers and other adults in schools. How much stupider are we capable of becoming?
dmsilev
@zhena gogolia: Apparently so. I refuse to actually play the video and find out. “Anachronistically Pert Boobs” does sound like it should be a band name; an all-woman punk group maybe?
dr. bloor
@debbie:
@Gravenstone:
He’s probably going to pull black inmates out of state pens to act as the targets.
debbie
Takes one to know one.
Baud
@debbie:
Or, you know, really horny.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Are they Wild Geese?
dr. bloor
@Ken: Apparently easier to find a taxidermist in Alaska than a plastic surgeon.
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
@Ken:
Meanwhile, Tina Fey still looks awesome
Baud
@Tony Jay:
That looks like movie for NotMax.
Old Man Shadow
Fundamentalist asshole prudes are the largest consumers of pornography and probably the largest market for sex workers.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: NotMax will watch anything.
Old Man Shadow
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch: Having a soul gives one a healthy glow.
SpaceUnit
In my experience the virtuous communities and the Christian communities are in different parts of town.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Very ‘of it’s time’ from what I recall, but that cast. chef’s kiss
debbie
@David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch:
Feathers
@zhena gogolia: This trial was just so strange. Both parties live in California, but the trial was in Virginia. The judge disallowed her contemporaneous medical records as hearsay. The jury wasn’t sequestered, so they went home to all the toxic three ring circus surrounding the trial every night. Depp lost in England, known to be the easiest venue for winning a libel verdict, yet he loses in Virginia?
I hope there are appeals and we find out what went wrong in the courtroom. We must have the standard that truth is an absolute defense in a libel case.
I would be very intrigued to hear from the lawyers on how this trial went so far off the rails.
Jeffro
@debbie: more pounding on the schools, lovely
“WHY DIDN’T YOU STOP OUR
SECRET SHOPPERFAKE GUN MASSACRE-COMMITTER WHEN HE HAD EIGHT HANDGUNS STUFFED DOWN HIS CARGO PANTS??? WHAT ARE YOU, BLIND???!?”also
“WHY DID YOU STOP A LAW-ABIDING, NON-GUN-BRANDISHING AMERICAN PARENT WHO HAPPENED TO BE WEARING CARGO PANTS FROM VISITING WITH HIS KID IN THE MIDDLE OF SOCIAL STUDIES TO SEE IF THE TEACHER WAS TEACHING ‘CRT’????!?”
fuck these people
Gravenstone
@zhena gogolia: And then tell us about it…
Tony Jay
Incidentally, I joked in one of my rants in an earlier thread that the only people who still like Flobalob Johnson also think that the film ‘Zulu’ is a template for race relations.
At least, I thought it was a joke.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Otto_English/status/1532012201799819264
Jeffro
@Gravenstone: 5: “aren’t I clever? I’m clever, aren’t I? Just by wearing this offensive t-shirt. FU libs!”
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
@zhena gogolia: He’s a TCM guy. they ran a couple of commando movies on Memorial Day, (Merrill’s Marauders and Dirty Dozen)[note the lazy alliteration].
Jay
@Tony Jay:
lamfao,
nobody has ever defeated Canada, aside from Oka, which was a detante.
MattF
One sometimes forgets how bizarre some of the RWNJs really are. Blaming Jesus is a cop-out, IMO.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
I feel personally attacked by the proposal to exclude degenerates.
Bex
And we have another mass shooting in Tulsa. But since people can’t get abortions there it’s all good.
Jay
@Baud:
define degenerate,….
Old Man Shadow
@Feathers: I don’t know.
I’ve heard from a social worker friend who thinks there was mutual abuse. I’ve heard from someone who dated a narcissist who thinks Depp is completely innocent. And I’ve heard from survivors of DV who very much identify with and believe Ms. Heard.
Neither one of them came off looking great in this trial, but that shouldn’t matter legally. All that should matter is the evidence.
I too expect we’ll see an appeal and I expect that fifteen million dollar award will get cut down quite a bit if not overturned.
But again… I wasn’t on the jury, so maybe they heard evidence that led them the way they voted.
Baud
@Jay:
Someone who regularly comments on a liberal blog.
debbie
@MattF:
Weird, like this?
Narya
How can a boob be anachronistically pert? Unnaturally, or … something. But anachronistically?
WaterGirl
@debbie: I didn’t know there was a johnny depp trial. Does that put me ahead of the game?
Tony Jay
@Baud:
That’s understandable. The years you’ve spent courting that base with suggestively shaped taco and blow evenings would be wasted.
MattF
@WaterGirl: Way ahead.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Either ahead of the game or in a very distinct minority!
indycat32
Another mass shooting. This time, a hospital in Tulsa.
Mai Naem mobile
@zhena gogolia: who? Did he win a primary somewhere?
WaterGirl
@debbie: Is there a cliff notes version? Did he do something wrong, and shouldn’t have (mostly) won? Or was it a bullshit case and he should have won across the board?
Old Man Shadow
Another goddamned one.
Second amendment be damned. Get rid of all the guns. Melt them down into farming equipment like their Bible tells them God will do.
Tony Jay
@Jay:
True, but that’s like saying no one’s surfed the waves on the River Mersey…
I keed!
NotMax
‘@Gravenstone
If the consensus is to refrain from doing so, wiling to comply.
@zhena gogolia
98% of which merits no mention from this quarter.
;)
MattF
@WaterGirl: Two (apparently) very bad people sued each other for defamation.
Mai Naem mobile
@Bex: I casually mentioned to my sister yesterday that there was a shooting in New Orleans. Today, apparently she saw the news on the Oklahoma shooting so she asked me if yesterday’s was Oklahoma. I told her nah, New Orleans. One would be a weeks long story in any other country. Here we can’t even keep track of them.
Geminid
@Jeffro: Gorka has a third-tier radio show that gets some weekend airtime in Charlottesville. I was scanning the radio one Saturday when I heard his obnoxious voice. I was about to scan on, but then I realized he was introducing his guest, Lauren Boebert. Well, this should be interesting, I thought.
It was. Once that motormouth got going, Gorka couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He didn’t even try to stop her at the hard break. One second she was babbling away, the next second some lady was selling mattresses.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Good, good.
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
JWR
@Bex: Three people killed, multiple people injured, suspect dead. OK is an open carry state, but as he walked across the parking lot, carrying the damn rifle, some people called the cops, which is why they were there so quickly, but not before he made it to the second floor. And so on and on it goes.
Adam Lang
‘@anne-laurie Ballade des dames du temps jadis!
This is a really lovely translation, set to music. Perhaps you’d enjoy it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKOyRz_AKx0
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia:
Just amazing the clips he can dig up!
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Feathers: Popehat’s been kinda speechless about it, but says he hasn’t paid particular attention to it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Delk
Seb sure looks scrawny.
Anne Laurie
@Old Man Shadow: Some people just set off the worst in each other. Adult children of alcoholics, and survivors of childhood abuse, use the metaphor of an ‘invisible mark’ on one’s forehead that only other survivors can see — we’re drawn to people who (mostly unconsciously) replicate the abnormal worldview we grew up under.
Or, as Ogden Nash wrote, well back in the last century :
Anne Laurie
@Delk: Ha! My first thought, seeing that pic, was Somebody thinks he has a newly svelte physique to show off…
debbie
@WaterGirl:
He said, she said in a pretty toxic relationship. You’re better off not knowing too much.
braccio
Just a translation. AR-15s are sometimes called Black Guns. ‘Cause they’re usually black. So Gorka is saying that AR-15s matter. Which is a whole lot of dehumanizing going on in three words.
Jeffro
@Geminid: yikes
I cannot imagine listening to either of them for more than 20, 30 seconds tops.
NotMax
‘@Another Scott
Shall defer to Mr. Peavey.
:)
Betty
@WaterGirl: The trial revealed two very dysfunctional people who apparently tormented each other. She made an allegation of domestic violence. He sued her for defamation and won. She also won a claim against him. Just an ugly situation.
Jay
@Tony Jay:
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/gallery/rare-site-people-surfing-river-13151998
WaterGirl
@Mai Naem mobile: No not that one, the other one.
different-church-lady
That he’s a sociopath. Why is this even a question?
Ken
@Narya: There was that bra slogan, “it lifts and separates.” And based on my viewing of late 50s and early 60s TV, a lot of bodices were cut so they were, how to put this, pointed.
different-church-lady
@debbie: Right, that is weird mate.
Jay
@braccio:
“black guns”, refer to AR pattern and other Military “pattern” guns, ranging across a broad scale, from M14’s, ( Norinco M1’s, a Chinese clone), to Ruger’s and SSK’s.
it’s the magazine/clip excuse writ large.
any semi auto rifle with a magazine with more than 5 rounds, (in Canada) is now a “black gun”,
Tony Jay
@Jay:
Ha! People be crazy.
Good Google-Fu. The Echo site is notoriously awful to navigate. 90% intrusive adverts, 5% stories about paedophiles, 5% stories about benefit ‘cheats’ driving big cars.
different-church-lady
@debbie: You know, there’s been 15 mass porn murders in just the past two weeks.
NotMax
‘@Ken
Some o’ them bullet/torpedo bras could put out someone’s eyes.
//
Feathers
@WaterGirl: it was a bullshit case and should have been thrown out, and would have been, except for a technicality.
In the UK, Depp sued the Sun newspaper for calling him a “wife beater.” UK libel law highly favors litigants, so Depp was favored to win. However, the judge ruled that there were 12 instances of physical abuse that were verifiably true, therefore Depp could legally be called a “wife beater.” That should have been enough to have his case against Heard thrown out, except for the fact that he sued the newspaper, rather than Heard, so the Virginia case was allowed to continue.
I’ve been following the trial, but not every moment, because I couldn’t find someone taking it seriously from a legal standpoint. I know that contemporaneous medical records were disallowed as hearsay, in an unusually strict reading and that changes in his testimony between the UK and US trials were ignored. Bad lawyering from her side? I don’t know. But I’m pretty close to his age and he has a history of violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and trashing hotel rooms since the 1980s. He admits to being a blackout drunk, but knows he couldn’t have hit his wife during those times. Basically, his defense was that she faked bruises with makeup, lied to her doctors and therapists, all in a nearly decade long conspiracy to frame him as an abuser.
@Old Man Shadow: Mutual abuse is when two violent (and usually drug/alcohol abusers) enter into a relationship and both start fights with each other. It happens, but is rare. Researchers and DV therapists now talk about their being an abuser and “reactive violence.” Namely, someone who is in a controlling and violent relationship begins to fight back. That appears to be what happened here.
As a general aside, I did go looking for someone taking the case seriously. As someone on Twitter said, we have a real problem with these sorts of cases, because the mainstream press sees them as sordid and beneath them. They get covered as gossip, with what the tabloids are saying as the main story. So the tabloid version just gets magnified by the NYT and such, rather than there being pushback on the sorts of issues I’m bringing up. Thus the NYT gets plaudits for re-examining the Britney Spears saga, while not treating what is happening to Amber Heard as a serious legal case, rather than a tawdry tabloid acrimonious divorce story.
apocalipstick
@Delk: “Do you think he looks… tired?”
Geminid
@Jeffro: I had followed Boebert’s election campaign. I was interested because she had knocked out the Republican incumbent, as had happened here in the VA 5th CD. But I had never heard her speak so I was curious. What a motormouth!
Boebert is being challenged in the CO 3rd primary by State Senator Don Coram. The 72 year-old Coram looks like rancher, but he’s actually a hemp farmer. He and Boebert debated last week, and Boebert brought up a state Senate vote of Coram’s that helped the hemp industry and himself. Boebert tried to accuse Coram of having ulterior motives, but she read her notes wrong and it came out of her mouth as “alternative motors.”
different-church-lady
@Feathers:
How is that even possible today?
ian
@Tony Jay:
US and Canadian forces share many important command posts, including Norad. Makes a sneak attack tricky. Also the record for the US trying to invade Canada is 0 for 3, so I think the Canadians have better odds than you give them.
Imagine occupying a country with the same population as Iraq, but 20 times the territory to hide in. No easy feat.
different-church-lady
I have to say, even for him Lou Reed is lookin’ kinda rough in that photo.
different-church-lady
@ian: “Why not surrender, eh?”
different-church-lady
Wait, “anachronistically?”
Tony Jay
@ian:
Hey, I said ‘If’, didn’t I?
Plus if Canadians wanted to hide from American patrols in all that wide-open, they’d have to deal with all the bloody Wendigos, right?
It’s a toss-up, but I bet they’d knuckle down under the Occupation while they researched the writings of the Sasquatch Extermination League.
In retrospect, I may have some misconceptions about Canada.
different-church-lady
I LOVE IT WHEN I DOMINATE THE RECENT COMMENTS BLOCK!!!1!
WaterGirl
@Geminid: Was she the same person who got gazpacho wrong? No, that was the other one. Two idiot sociopathic fame-seeking peas in a pod.
different-church-lady
@Tony Jay: Retrospect is a harsh mistress.
different-church-lady
@WaterGirl: They don’t need to be two different people.
different-church-lady
I feel good thinking that Seb Gorka has never had a happy day in his life.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
5. All of the above
Anne Laurie
@different-church-lady: Wasn’t Dreher the guy who first achieved ‘fame’ by blogging about 1950s advertising / marketing?
I think he’s got some kind of unfortunate adolescent sexual fixation on those bullet-cone bras from the Maidenform ads…
Cameron
@Another Scott: So the moral of today’s story is….go to a shitty bogus college, get your debts scrubbed; go to a real college, too bad, so sad? I’m a confused old man. I don’t understand what’s so wonderful here.
Feathers
@different-church-lady: The issue is having their media reporters cover it as a cultural event, rather than having legal analysts talking about what is actually happening in the courtroom.
The jury found that Heard libeled Depp by calling herself a victim of domestic violence in an op-ed that didn’t mention his name. This jury also found that Depp libeled Heard when he called her claims of being a domestic violence a hoax. How TF did we end up here?
NotMax
‘@Anne Laurie
“I dreamed I signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty in my Maidenform bra.”
//
Another Scott
@Cameron: I don’t know all the details, but my understanding is that many/most people who went to “school” there got a worthless “degree” in spite of promises to the contrary and a mountain of expensive debt. People who are swindled should have an out, and if the government was backing loans (and thus implicitly saying the “education” from that “institution” was valuable), then the government should eat the debt – not the people who took it out in good faith.
Plus, the courts have been involved. StudentAid.gov has more.
Impoverishing young people for decades for their education (when their parents and grandparents didn’t have such huge burdens) is unfair and bad for America. This is another step in the right direction (but much more needs to be done).
My $0.02. YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@different-church-lady:
Lou Reed earned that rough face.
debbie
@Feathers:
Also that her words cost him work.
Yutsano
Jeebus. All I see is moobs. Which I cannot unsee…
Ms. Deranged in AZ
TBH the Depp v Heard thing was sordid. They both came across as assholes, her being more of one than him. However, as a survivor of domestic abuse there was some testimony from Depp that rang very true to me–I have no doubt that she was abusive toward him. I can also say that if he did start to fight back, and some of us do, we can be just as ugly in our responses (when I fought back, the last time he tried to lay hands on me, I broke his ribs). In other words, it’s hard to live with an abusive asshole day in and day out without building up some serious and destructive anger, and when it comes out, it ain’t pretty. And acknowledging that Heard was abusive, in no way excuses Depp from being an annoying pain in the ass drunk….so it was a wash reputation-wise if you ask me. One final point, not sure why so many of you are saying Depp lost. Jury found she had defamed him and cost him money, awarding him $10 mill in compensatory and $5 mill in punitive. Heard’s countersuit was about defamation due to statements made by Depp’s attorney. Jury found that to be true as well awarding her only $3 mill in compensatory and zero in punitive. That’s a win for Depp. Is it perfect? No but in that mess of a case,it’s as good as he was ever going to get.
MisterDancer
This whole business has me so enraged that I cannot see straight.
We treat this as spectacle, like the OJ Simpson and so many other cases. And it’s more like how we treated Britany Spears, how we fail to see the larger societal issues to these situations — especially in an age where we know political/media manipulation is rife and sophisticated.
Depp didn’t land in a courtroom that televised by accident. We didn’t see waves of social media by accident; hell, I’ve been seeing “people” on Reddit attacking Heard for years, in ways very similar to Bot activity on so many topics we discuss here. That the raging media coverage, including social, was not an accident, but deliberate — and involves a lot of the same assholes, like Tucker Carlson, that we rightly excoriate daily, here and elsewhere.
Bothsiderism, now weaponized for more than just political apathy.
Legal issues and right/wrong of the people aside, this was a Trap. And I hate that so many of us — including myself, for a time — fell into it.