"recent monticello visitor" is, uh, certainly one way to describe an antivax goldbug bitcoin crypto weirdo. https://t.co/A1U8vKC59P
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) July 11, 2022
Apparently Fox News is having a little trouble recruiting ‘guests’ to distract from all the Jan6 Committee hearing news. You liberals don’t understand, Tom Jefferson is an American *saint*!!! may be a reliable chestnut, but it’s not exactly designed to attract Very Serious Pundit attention…
league of the south AKA the Charlottesville rioters mostly known now for taking pics of themselves gloating in front of the Emmett Till memorial. https://t.co/34pugxZevn
— zeddy (@Zeddary) July 11, 2022
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) July 11, 2022
Always be selling:
“… an American economics writer of the Austrian School, an advocate of anarcho-capitalism and Bitcoin, a publisher of libertarian books, a conference speaker, and an internet entrepreneur…. “
bbleh
Any time I see the phrase “Austrian School,” I need to take an antihistamine.
“A well-traveled spokesman for Revival Tent Theology, and an experienced Layer-On of Hands.”
Baud
Monticello should emphasize Thomas Jefferson’s views on the separation of church and state.
bbleh
@Baud: Yeah! Those dang Eye-talians NEVER get the story straight!
zhena gogolia
Who the fuck does this guy think built Monticello?
GrannyMC
“… an American economics writer of the Austrian School, an advocate of anarcho-capitalism and Bitcoin, a publisher of libertarian books, a conference speaker, and an internet entrepreneur…. “
“crank” is easier to type
mrmoshpotato
Why is history infected with facts!? I mean, wokeism!
Ken
But so denigrating to people who merely believe that the Earth is flat, or that Stonehenge was built by aliens.
mali muso
Some ten years ago when hubby was approved for naturalization, he was assigned the July 4 ceremony at Monticello. It was quite the patriotic event; local homeboy Dave Matthews was the guest speaker. We got a year long pass to visit the historic site and went on a tour not long after. I have a clear memory of the tour guide speaking very frankly about Jefferson’s role as a slave owner and not sugar coating anything. Even when one guest tried to pull the old “but wasn’t he a good/nice slave owner”, the guide (old, white dude) was having none of it. I walked away pretty impressed. But then again, that was back in the halcyon days of the Obama era. Not the new “woke” CRT times we now live in.
Hoodie
@Baud: They generally do. A friend of my wife’s used to work as a horticulturist there, they have a good interpretive program there. Has the bow tie become the unofficial badge of douchebaggery?
Tony G
Fox News is, essentially, a “classic rock” station that’s been playing the same songs for aging boomers for decades. I visited Monticello 17 years ago and, yeah, the tour guide talked about the slaves as much as she talked about Jefferson. This is not a new approach to the portrayal of U.S. history, unless you’re still living in 1950’s America that nobody under the age of 80 remembers.
Anne Laurie
George Will (figuratively) begat Tucker Carlson, who begat this sorry wannabe. I think it’s supposed to signify they’re ‘dapper’. I’m not fifty years behind the times, I’m *dapper*! Like those fine specimens on Mad Men, y’know?
phdesmond
just got a poem of mine published today! i’m thrilled. it’s short.
https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/poems-of-the-week/light-verse/
Scout211
@phdesmond:
Sweet! Love it.
ETA: and congrats!
Baud
@phdesmond:
phdesmond
@Scout211: thank you!
PaulB
He probably wants the George Washington “I cannot tell a lie; I chopped down the cherry tree” story told at Mount Vernon.
Off topic: I have a feeling I should have gone for the extended warranty on my body. Left foot and right knee strained in separate incidents last year, hernia surgery earlier this year, and now in physical therapy for rotator cuff “impingement.” It wouldn’t be so bad if I could just find a comfortable position for sleeping.
Baud
@Hoodie: I feel bad for Sen. Paul Simon.
Baud
@PaulB:
They sell those. Just pick up the phone next time you don’t recognize the number.
japa21
IIRC correctly, Jefferson was kind of a persona non grata on the right not that long ago. Something about the fact that he wasn’t even a Christian or some such thing. I think Texas required that mention of him be minimized in their school books.
And when we went to Monticello in the early 80’s they were very sure everybody knew he was a slave owner. They emphasized his complexity.
RSA
I like how Jeffrey Tucker, Austrian School libertarian, has a Wikipedia page plastered with editorial comments: “[citation needed]”, “[non-primary source needed]”, “[self-published source?]”, and “Please help this article by looking for better, more reliable sources. Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted.”
By extension, this is how all libertarian writing should be treated.
Hoodie
@Anne Laurie: Don Draper and Roger Stirling only wore bow ties with tuxes, like real men. Bert Cooper wore a bow tie but, of course, he had been castrated.
Heidi Mom
@phdesmond: Love it!
PaulB
It does seem that way, although one well known bow tie wearer was Justice John Paul Stevens, so it hasn’t been this way forever.
One of my favorite anecdotes about Stevens was that early in his career as a lawyer, an opposing counsel decided to mock him for wearing a clip-on bow tie (the “pound the table” school of jurisprudence, when you have neither facts nor law on your side). Without saying a word, Stevens quietly untied and then retied his (non-clip-on) bow tie, much to the embarrassment of his opposition and the amusement of the jury.
Immanentize
@phdesmond: of a station on the metro, eh?
Mag
As a kid growing up in Minnesota, when I heard Monticello it meant the local nuclear power plant first, Jefferson’s estate was a distant second.
phdesmond
@Heidi Mom:
thanks so much!
phdesmond
@Immanentize:
yes! say it in few words.
Bill Arnold
Anyone who helped organize the Great Barrington Declaration committed mass murder for reasons of political and economic gain. Seriously – that man enthusiastically worked to kill millions of humans for no good reason at all (evil reasons, yes). Even if he believes otherwise, he is still guilty.
phdesmond
@Baud:
i must learn non-verbal communication. but, in english, i’m glad you liked it.
schrodingers_cat
@mali muso: The tour guides Mt. Vernon were pretty candid about Washington’s slave ownership too.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Many years ago, when Senator Simon was running for president, I read in an American newsmagazine (probably TIME) that some people thought he was the guy from Simon & Garfunkel.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
He looks nothing like Garfunkel.
Baud
@PaulB:
That’s a classic lawyer story if ever there was one.
RedDirtGirl
@phdesmond: Congratulations!
smike
@phdesmond:
Cool!
mali muso
@schrodingers_cat: We visited Mt Vernon a few years back and I recall similar guide explainers. I think the Monticello experience stuck out to me because of that particular interaction and the skillful way the guide turned the (ridiculous) question back on the guy. Basically “what part of owning other people would you characterize as good?” I think the white dude who asked the question was a little taken aback that a fellow white guy was not sympatico. Identity politics!
Ken
@Baud: And he can’t be the other guy, because they were seen together on Saturday Night Live (about 4:20).
phdesmond
@RedDirtGirl:
@smike:
thank you very much!
Baud
@phdesmond:
I think you may be ready to move up to heavy poetry.
Gwangung
@phdesmond: This is sooooo cool!
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
These fucking dirtbags give people who wear bow ties–like me–a bad name. Fuck him sideways.
Anne Laurie
Pro tip: Pillows can be a real help w/this. You’d be amazed how quickly you get used to changing position (or not) in your sleep, when you’ve got an injured extremity propped up on/between some bolsters…
Kent
“Austrian School”?
For fuck’s sake. Can’t have those damn furiners doing our economics.
I only want to hear about the good ole “Merican” school.
phdesmond
@Baud:
just when i’d seen the light? well, poetry’s a fast-paced business.
Jerzy Russian
@mali muso: If you go to Plymouth Village in Massachusetts, the first thing you see is a film depicting the harm the Pilgrims did to the natives. After that, you have to pass through a reproduction of a Patuxet settlement before you get to see the Pilgrims. I was there in the fall of 2008.
phdesmond
@Gwangung:
thanks for the praise! i hope somehow it helps the struggle.
eachother
Open Thread
Couldn’t be more excited to see Webb pictures tomorrow.
Or to hear J6 Committee presentations.
Or finish loading another dumpster with yard debris.
Big day tomorrow.
SiubhanDuinne
@phdesmond:
I love it! Congratulations!
phdesmond
@SiubhanDuinne:
thank you, Siubhan! i’m pleased you liked it.
opiejeanne
@Anne Laurie: Alas, they’ve destroyed one of the most charming memories about my HS Chemistry teacher. He was much beloved by the students and when we found out when his birthday was we all chipped in to buy him a new bowtie.
He was not a douchebag rightie, and he saved me from failing Algebra II.
Omnes Omnibus
@mali muso:
Bit of a contradiction in terms there….
rikyrah
@phdesmond:
Congratulations
Omnes Omnibus
@Hoodie: I still say it’s the only tie for with a a dinner jacket.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: We are all Wokemistas now!
BeautifulPlumage
@phdesmond: wonderful! Congratulations
eachother
@phdesmond: I love the primary colors. Light. Seeing. But Florida has defied them. And defined them. The Florida spectrum is troublesome and deeply offensive. Diminished brightness. A sub-tropical dissapointment.
Nice poem phdesmond. Congratulations.
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
A few years ago, i had a couple of short stories published in Penthouse (Link)
Emma from Miami
@GrannyMC: Hey! I resent that. I am a crank, and I will defend to my last breath my belief that the Maya pyramids can be linked to form a massive telescope. But the Austrian school? That’s just kooky.
Lyrebird
Just what I was thinking!
I don’t what *they’re* thinking, if they’re thinking.
arrieve
@phdesmond: That made me smile! Congratulations!
Cacti
For a lot of the mouth breathers, woke is just the new way of saying n**ger.
Cameron
It’s so pathetic. These creatures mouth these sounds and you know instantly that their only comprehension of what they’re saying is “big librul werd-haw,haw,haw-me hate u-pwnd again libtard-haw haw haw-saying bad libtard werd…” They’ve almost regressed below the level of mammals, let alone primates.
opiejeanne
@phdesmond: Congratulations. It’s very good.
Jojo
@Hoodie: The bow tie thing reminds me of this quote: “It was my friend Frank, a writer in San Francisco, who finally set me straight. When asked about my new look he put down his fork and stared at me for a few moments. ‘A bow tie announces to the world you can no longer get an erection.'”
Cameron
@Anne Laurie: Did you misspell fapper?
Cacti
They should also mention that Jefferson thought the idea that we should be forever hidebound to what they thought in 1787 was ridiculous.
Citizen Alan
@Hoodie:
So saddening, Matt Smith worked so hard to rescue the bow tie from ignominy and make it cool, but against Libertarian wankers, even a Time Lord would struggle in vain.
phdesmond
@rikyrah:
@BeautifulPlumage:
@eachother:
@arrieve:
thank you all. please feel free to share the URL and the poem with your friends!
— peter
Cacti
@Citizen Alan: George Will got a lot of mileage out of the fact that wearing a bow tie and glasses will make many people think that you’re smart.
phdesmond
@opiejeanne: i’m glad you like it.
dexwood
@Hoodie: Has the bow tie become the unofficial badge of douchebaggery?
As it was, as it is, as it will always be.
Brachiator
Whut?
Geminid
@japa21: One of the best books about Thomas Jefferson is not actually about him. But Jefferson is a major figure in Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello. (2008). Ms. Gordon-Reed won the Pulitzer Prize for history with her book about Sally Hemings’s family. It is meticulously researched, and Gordon-Reed pays especially close attention to the years Ms. Hemings and her older brother spent with Jefferson in Paris.
Jefferson’s complexity is expressed in one of his lesser known but most consequential accomplishments: the cession by Virginia of its territories west of the Ohio River. They had been conquered for Virginia by George Rogers Clark and his men. Jefferson pushed the Northwest Ordinance through the Congress of the Articles of Confederation, before heading to France as ambassador. Under the Ordinance, slavery was prohibited in the states north and west of the Ohio. That is where Jefferson’s and Hemings’ sons went when they came of age. They were listed on Monticello’s books as “escaped.”
The Northwest Ordinance couldn’t prohibit racism, though. When a Mr. Randolph, Jefferson’s relative, sent over 300 enslaved people from his plantations to Ohio as free men and women, hostility was so great they had to break into smaller groups to find safe havens.
But it was in the states from Ohio to Minnesota, and not the South, where Jefferson’s vision for a society of “yeoman farmers” found fruition. And seventy some years after passage of the Northwest Ordinance, the hundreds of thousands of troops these states provided the Union made the difference in the Civil War.
prostratedragon
@phdesmond: Congratulations! Words to think by.
Citizen Alan
@opiejeanne:
I’ve always been sad that I’ve never felt right in a bow tie even though I’m a lawyer and could pull it off in a professional setting. But I’m a big fat guy, and aside from the difficulty of getting a bow tie for a 22-inch neck, I’ve always thought that fat guys in bow ties look like bowling pins that have been gift wrapped for some reason.
phdesmond
@prostratedragon:
thank you. feel free to share the URL and the poem with your friends.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator: It means he wants America to be “Somalia for White People” because he thinks he’ll be a regional warlord instead of a peasant who dances when bandits shoot at his feet.
Ken
@Brachiator: I suspect “anarcho-capitalism” means “the government can’t tell me what I can do”.
Steeplejack
dnfree
@phdesmond: I like it!
topclimber
Jefferson spelled out the core American problem: slavery could not endure, but white society could not accept blacks as citizens. While he mulled this conundrum, he practiced slave holding in an intimate way with his mistress, and in a business like way with his other chattel.
Jefferson’s abstract solution to his conundrum was to ship black folks back to Africa. He does not seem to have considered sending whites back to Europe.
Brachiator
Beau of the Fifth Column has an interesting take on Jefferson, Monticello and Fox News
opiejeanne
@Citizen Alan: Mr Thaller was not slim, but he carried it off well, wearing paisley ties with subdued plaid shirts. It was the 60s.
Marmot
@topclimber: Ha. I’m surprised I haven’t heard that one before.
phdesmond
@dnfree: i’m glad you do! thanks.
CaseyL
@phdesmond: Short and very much to the point: well done! And congrats!
Had another covid scare this morning, and used up the last of my government tests. Negative, so good, but now I need to go out and actually buy some tests. Hmph.
phdesmond
@CaseyL: hey, thanks! i appreciate it.
didn’t they increase the number of free tests from the government? at some point?
different-church-lady
You thought the house would be “protected” when THERE’S FUCKIN’ SLAVE QUARTERS RIGHT IN THE GODDAMNED BASEMENT OF THE THING?
Darkrose
@phdesmond: Congratulations! That’s awesome.
Gwangung
@phdesmond: Well, Washington state gives eight tests per month….
eclare
@phdesmond: So well put. Congratulations!
Geoduck
Bill Nye is another decent bow-tie wearer. I believe he’s said he favors them because they are safer than long ties in a laboratory setting.
phdesmond
@Darkrose:
@eclare:
i’m glad you liked the poem! hope it proves useful.
Sister Golden Bear
@Citizen Alan: We’ll always have fezzes.
eclare
@Geoduck: I remember decades ago working in an office with file cabinets. A guy that I worked with got a file from a lower drawer, closed the drawer, and with it his tie!
So Bill Nye’s reasoning makes sense to me.
Sister Golden Bear
@phdesmond: Short but powerful.
phdesmond
@Sister Golden Bear: just enough words.
lurker
@phdesmond: it’s a little long … made it hard to get through that third line …
; – )
Congrats – always amazing to get something through the process and out into the wild…
lgerard
A visit to this clown’s web site finds it’s discussion pages totally overrun by spammers
Freedom!
phdesmond
@lurker:
yeah, if i don’t take a deep breath i may not be able to recite the whole damn thing!
Omnes Omnibus
@phdesmond: Dramatic pauses are good though.
Yutsano
@phdesmond: C’est fantastique! MAZEL TOV!
Matt McIrvin
@topclimber: “Send them back to Africa” was the default position of a lot of white people theoretically opposed to slavery up to the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln had to be disabused of the notion after the war had already begun.
phdesmond
@Omnes Omnibus:
i shouldn’t try to break any speed records? oh, okay, i’ll just draw a breath or two during.
phdesmond
@Yutsano:
hey, fellow tax man. thank you!
CaseyL
@Gwangung: They do! I just ordered a bunch. Thanks!
Brachiator
@phdesmond:
Very cool poem. Congratulations!
phdesmond
@Brachiator:
thank you! it’s gotten a tremendous reception tonight. i feel like i crashed @Anne Laurie’s party!
Omnes Omnibus
@phdesmond:
It’s an open thread.
phdesmond
@Omnes Omnibus: phew!
Ladyraxterinok
@topclimber:
IIRC Queen Elizabeth I welcomed the money made by the first English ship that transported slaves from Africa to the New World
Splitting Image
@Hoodie:
Archie Andrews gave them up decades ago. Since then, it’s been owned by the douchebaggers. To be fair, it has been superceded by the Drudge hat.
sralloway
@phdesmond: Happy for you. It’s a good thing.
A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)
@Anne Laurie: Since when is it “unofficial”
p.a.
“Woke” comeback: the opposite of woke is comatose; I’ll take woke any day.
“When do we get White History Month?” comeback: That would be every month for 400 fucking years…
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: As long as they don’t corrupt the Jughead hat.
Butter Emails!
I’m pretty sure we all knew that “woke” and “CRT” really just mean telling it like it is/was. It’s nice to have Fox just come out and provide such compelling evidence of that fact.
Tony G
@bbleh: “The Austrian School”. Mises on Italian Fascism in 1927: “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. ” Why are all these fascists calling themselves “libertarians”? And what’s the deal with the goddamn bowtie? Some kind of secret signal to the faithful?
SFAW
@Cacti:
That those mofos are not smote by lightning, every time they say “woke” as an insult, is Example #3,721,993 of proof that there is no such thing as a Just God.
hedgehog mobile
@phdesmond: Love it.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Abraham Lincoln was a politician and he said politic things about emigration of Black Americans, even while he was in the White House. Lincoln was also a realist, though, and I think he understood that Black Americans were here to stay.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Hahaha
Tony G
@Splitting Image: I wore a clip-on bow tie on special occasions when I was seven years old. Then I grew the hell up.
Tony G
@topclimber: The fact is that white supremacy was the position — the “scientific” consensus — of almost all white people in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century. Jefferson was only one of many examples of that. Education — and tour guides at Monticello — should reflect that fact. If that bothers bow-tie-wearing League of the South aficionados, then I send them my thoughts and prayers. Fox News is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but I’m sure that the bitter old men who watch that network will be just fine with it.
J R in WV
@PaulB:
I use a ton of pillows, of varying types and fillers, from down to stiff foam. I sleep in my side, and use a fat pillow between my knees on Dr’s suggestion, and another stiff pillow to hold my upper arm up to relieve stress on my (replaced) shoulder. Big fluffy down [pillows for my head, which I can pummel into holding my head however I need it.
ETA: I see that others have similar methods for sleeping in comfort. Carry on!
J R in WV
@Geoduck:
One of my best friends was for a long time a tech for IBM, and often serviced complex machines, like card readers, punches, etc. Getting a necktie caught in such a machine is a life-threatening event. So he used clip-on neckties, only risk was about $12 for a new black tie. Lost a couple in his career.
Was a software major with me on our second go-round at college. Less dangerous than hardware!
phdesmond
@sralloway:
@hedgehog mobile:
belated thanks to both of you!