I never would have guessed Dave Chappell's biggest joke was going to be the world's richest man being booed off stage.
I couldn't think of a bigger joke!
Thank god you're rich, because you're not funny nor entertaining.
Just keep stealing memes Elon.#ElonMusk #DaveChappelle pic.twitter.com/mQOCNDO4md
— Ashes to Ashes, Musk to Musk (@_Musk2Musk_) December 13, 2022
On the one hand, it’s San Francisco, where Musk has not made himself popular recently; on the other, it’s not as though anyone paying money to listen to Dave Chappell would’ve been expected to suffer from the ‘woke mind virus’…
Musk’s hand-picked moderation team has been nuking every recording of the incident they can find, so here’s the Guardian story:
… “Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” the comedian Dave Chappelle roared on stage at the Chase Center in San Francisco as he invited the Twitter owner out to join him on Sunday night.
For the first couple of seconds Musk appeared ready to accept a euphoric welcome from the crowd of 18,000. He raised his arms high in the air and spun around as though he’d just scored a World Cup decider.
Then the booing started. And it continued. And it got louder. And louder. For the best part of 10 minutes Musk was given a real-time readout of his current popularity ratings…
A normally irrepressible Musk seemed to be dumbstruck by the booing. He remained speechless, only opening his mouth to cry for help: “Dave, what shall I say?”
“Don’t say nothing,” Chappelle counseled. “You hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest.”
At least there was alternative facts to fall back on. By Monday morning Musk had perked up and was busily rewriting history. The deafening noise, he reassured his Twitter followers, had in fact been “90% cheers & 10% boos”.
Tell that to James Yu, a writer who was in the crowd on Sunday. “A good 80% of the stadium boos,” he estimated, noting that once the jeering started Musk withered on stage and turned “into a corncob”.
That’s the problem with punching-down, grievance-stroking Shock Comedy, of course: Its practitioners have to keep ramping up the intensity or their audience loses interest. And, right now, there’s a lot of competition out there. From Bloomberg, “Elon Musk Is Ruining Trump’s Presidential Campaign“:
For years, Donald Trump has survived scandal, scorn and defeat and still managed to keep his warlord grip on the Republican Party. Even this month’s epic string of disasters, from his candidates’ losses in the midterms and his dinner with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and professed Hitler-fan Ye (Kanye West) to the tax fraud convictions of two of his companies, might not derail him.
But irrelevance might. In the critical weeks since his Nov. 16 campaign launch, the person who has dominated the right-wing attention economy isn’t Trump. It’s Elon Musk.
Musk didn’t just take over Trump’s favorite medium, Twitter. He seems to have done so for the explicit Trumpian purposes of striking back at his critics, “owning the libs,” and stoking the sort of generalized chaos that was once Trump’s calling card, before he was banished from Twitter and took up exile in the empty wilderness of Truth Social. He’s succeeded on all fronts.
Of course, Musk also broadcast his solidarity with the MAGA masses by ending Trump’s Twitter ban and inviting his return to the platform. But Trump, probably because he owns a big equity stake in Truth Social and knows going back would nuke its value, has so far resisted the heroin temptation of taking up his old Twitter habit.
That hasn’t stopped other figures from the Trump menagerie from gleefully rushing back as soon as Musk re-platformed them. It’s made him an overnight hero for accomplishing what Trump, through all his threats and tantrums, never could: prying Twitter away from the craven Silicon Valley gatekeepers and restoring them to a position of prominence. Musk is the toast of MAGA world…
But what’s hurt Trump the most, I think, is that Musk has robbed him of the singular quality that fueled his political career from the moment he came down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015: You couldn’t look away from him, even if you wanted to. Today, Musk occupies that role…
Trump’s political superpower was his exhausting ability to dominate the national conversation and make it all about him. He was all three rings of the circus, plus the clown, the lion and the ringmaster. If Trump can no longer excite and entertain the conservative masses, it’s hard to imagine that his presidential campaign will ever get out of the ditch. A year and half from now, Ron DeSantis or some other Republican may finally wrest the party back from Trump. But it will be Musk who put Trump out to pasture.
However much this is GOP wishcasting that someone else will slay their Frankenstein’s monster, there’s a certain beauty in the image of two out-of-control #failsons locked in mortal combat sliding over the edge of the abyss…
WE’RE NUMBER ONE!
WE’RE NUMBER ONE! https://t.co/hkK9edJOsJ
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) December 13, 2022
guess we should keep handing them matches
— Faine Greenwood (@faineg) December 11, 2022
Aussie Sheila
Thank you AL, once again for all your work. I really love your stuff. And what an amusing and satisfying piece of work this is. Top notch take down of two of the greatest crybabies of our time. 😉
scav
Come on baby, light that fire.
NotMax
In a word, blech.
MobiusKlein
How many folks in the SF Chapelle audience got fired by Musk, know somebody fired by Musk,
or you know,
went to a comedy show to get away from the grind of the daily news and crap, to just get hit with that guy. Folks in SF going to a Chapelle show aren’t likely to be the highly woke crowd. Knowing that, Musk getting booed like that is notable.
Aussie Sheila
@MobiusKlein: Yeah I wondered about that. Does anybody think Chapelle set him up, or is Chapelle equally clueless and entitled?
Amir Khalid
All of crypto should collapse.
MobiusKlein
@Aussie Sheila: Chappelle doesn’t understand the audience – or just thought it would be a hoot to have another “bad boy” on the stage
Ruckus
I have zero idea how to fight these asshole rich fucksticks and their concept of their money and hate is worth more than actual humanity. But I’d bet that taxing the fuck out of them might have some positive returns. On Anne’s last thread where Eric S at #43 told us about the asshole who set a vagrant man on fire is about as far away from a reasonable democratic nation as it gets.
I’m glad SFB II got the response he deserves but I’m still trying to figure out how I volunteered for military duty, in a country where it took decades for men hugely damaged by burn pits to get VA health coverage, where we hear daily about things like the UnSupreme court destroying 50 yr old legal decisions that effect millions of citizens because of their fucking politics of hate, religion and bullshit. It’s all about power and money, not government, certainly not democracy of any kind, shape or form. I’ll take that VA healthcare because I earned it but so many people in this country (and others) get treated like third or fourth class citizens at best because of their skin color. And no it’s not just white people, read about the people in Los Angeles on the city counsel. Latinos acting like white people. (And Yes, I’m pale as a piece of typing paper) Come on there are lots better groups to emulate. Some humans just suck.
NotMax
Was under the impression Chappelle is performer non grata due to spouting transphobic material?
Aussie Sheila
@Ruckus: Hi there Ruckus. I hear you. As to why people act the way they do, I can only say that in my experience social solidarity is very important in imposing behavioural norms on people, and when it is lacking, or selectively based on hierarchies, everyone is less safe and life is harder. Laws can only do so much.
Behavioural norms are much more important in my view than any law ever written.
AlthoughI do believe that laws, over time, can impose some behaviour modifications. But not the deep feeling of solidarity.
Yutsano
I’m just here for the food…
NotMax
Okay, fully aware I am not the intended audience but this weird 15 second thing keeps popping up during breaks on streaming services with ads.
Honestly, ya think it persuades anyone?
NotMax
Crap on a cracker. Coding fix.
Okay, fully aware I am not the intended audience but this weird 15 second thing keeps popping up during breaks on streaming services with ads.
Honestly, ya think it persuades anyone?
Aussie Sheila
@NotMax: I can’t even decode it. What does it even mean? What is it saying?
And who could care?
Ruckus
@Aussie Sheila:
It can in smaller communities. I live in LA county, which has a larger population than 40 states. This is not a small community, there aren’t spaces between towns in LA county. Laws, equally applied and equal in representation can actually create social solidarity, but this county has had a lot of it’s tax laws screwed up by the money people, who think their shit doesn’t stink and that their money makes them better. It does and it doesn’t. We have to figure this equality shit out or I have no idea how this is going to shake out. But shake it will because money buys stuff, but not people. We figured that out long ago, but the financial people figured out how to screw that up, pay enough and your bought and paid for legislators will figure out how to make it better to be rich than free, because they can buy their freedom. But the rest of us can’t.
NotMax
@Aussie Sheila
We’re in the same boat. Cannot make heads nor tails of it either.
:)
mrmoshpotato
They should form their own country in the middle of the Pacific (far from view of any actual land) with their currency being on the sucking-their-own-cocks standard.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
mrmoshpotato
Late night pizza going in now.
john (not mccain)
I wonder if Musk has a J Epstein problem. He seems like the type.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
I don’t know what would be sweeter, indicting him on Christmas or on Jan 6.
mrmoshpotato
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch:
January 6th. Don’t let the Kremlin’s fat orange fascist manbaby ruin Christmas.
Aussie Sheila
@john (not mccain): Yes. I’ve wondered that, but never been game to put it in writing. He has all the hallmarks, and a family history that is just effed. Apparently his father married a stepdaughter. Un effing believable. Musk strikes me as being strung out mentally and emotionally, but rich enough that it doesn’t matter for himself, just every one else.
I am confident however that his rep will never recover, he will lose a lot of money, and sooner or later, another ‘twitter’ will be financed that will leave him like a beached whale.
Tony Jay
Kind of sums up the blinkered cluelessness and self-reverential mendacity of the modern Media Machine.
No, you fuckers, the problem wasn’t that people “couldn’t look away” from The Pustule, the problem was that you people were utterly obsessed with everything the creepy bastard did, said and ‘thought’ to the exclusion of all else, with ‘all else’ being a wide-ranging smorgasbord of important checks on his out-of-control behaviour including, but not limited to, actually reporting on what he did, said and thought would mean for real people out in the real world.
Instead, as with their current fascination with the self-inflicted travails of Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Musk, the spectacle was absolutely everything, the more obscene and destructive the better, and the fact that these solipsistic edgecreeps are gleefully bulldozing civilisation to the ground in pursuit of validation is of zero concern to the bought and paid for occupants of the Shock’n’Awe Newz Shack.
sanjeevs
@john (not mccain):
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/business/jeffrey-epstein-interview.html
WereBear
@john (not mccain): Money and power buys the world’s oldest profession.
They don’t bother to have anything else to offer.
Tony Jay
@john (not mccain):
Given the previous objects of his marital obsessions all I can say is that Jenna Ortega’s people better melt down her phone and form a ring of steel around her toot sweet, because that Musk boy will be coming for her.
Aussie Sheila
@Tony Jay: Come and sit by me.
The attention economy is the doomsday machine no-one thought about, till it happened. The press and the 24/7 tv machine plus social media makes 1984 look unambitious.
WereBear
@Aussie Sheila: When they have enough money they can stay Peter Pan.
I always thought that tale had a darker underbelly. Turns out I’m looking righter all the time.
lowtechcyclist
What a shame that would be, right? ;-)
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: Now there’s the next evolution of the criminal mind.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@lowtechcyclist: That’s a new(ish) spin on “too big to fail”: “too big to prosecute”. I can just picture Joe Biden hearing that, and then telling Merrick Garland “let’s see what happens”, a la Gregor Vorbarra from the Vorkosigan Saga.
VeniceRiley
Chris “Bot Sentel” Bouzy has registered Spoutible.com and I am eagerly anticipating the launch. I’d love to support a POC TEAM option to twitter that doesn’t require I choose a mastodon server or whatever. He’s been great about asking regular tweeters what they want from his platform, and has the skills and credibility to do it. Fingers crossed!
West of the Rockies
Sort of stunning how much ill-will Chapelle and Musk have created for themselves. Oh, both are still wealthy and WEALTHY, and both still have plenty of fans, I guess. But still…
Steeplejack
No judgment!—but this is funny: “Merrick Garland’s Procrastination Diary.”
Rusty
@Aussie Sheila: I somehow missed it being called the Attention Economy, but it fits perfectly. That craving for attention is one of those character defects that almost all of us have to a greater or lesser extent. Run riot it is personally destructive and particularly when coupled to wealth destructive to those around the person.
Steeplejack
The joint is oddly quiet this morning. Usually by now we’ve got “On the Road” (no pressure!) and the early birds are chirping. Did I miss a rager party last night and everyone is sleeping in?
Lacuna Synecdoche
Brianna Wu via Anne Laurie @ Top:
They said like they think the gov’t will believe that’s a bad thing.
It’s adorable.
Barbara
@mrmoshpotato: Fear of collapsing as soon as an indictment drops is another way of saying Crypto is a ponzi scheme built solely on expectations.
catclub
A good start, then.
WaterGirl
It’s early for me to be up, and I glanced at the post fly-out as I was opening the post in a new tab.
I read this…
…as overestimating the petty grievance market, and my immediate thought was that it’s impossible to overestimate the petty grievance market. Alas, it’s over saturating. Now to read the post.
catclub
@Lacuna Synecdoche:
I shake my tiny fist at your faster fingers!
The Thin Black Duke
I mourn the loss of Dave Chappelle. I thought Dave was on the path to becoming the next Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce or George Carlin. That Dave Chappelle is gone, most likely for good, and he has nobody to blame for himself.
Geminid
@sanjeevs: Back when she was on Twitter, Xeni Jardin put up a lot of material about J. Epstein’s networking with tech titans through the Edge Foundation’s fancy dinners. Jardin acknowledged that she took part in some of these gatherings, as a well known (and hot looking) “tech culture journalist.” Jardin also recounted evidence of Russian penetration of Silcan Valley tech business, as well a trip Epstein took to Russia in the company of a Swiss-American tech industrialist who Jardin once considered a mentor or sponser.
Now I wish I had taken notes, for Jardin fled Twitter in October when it turned out that Musk was following through on his Twitter acquisition, and her widely read (~250,000 follower) account shut down. I think I can still hunt up a couple journalists she described as doing serious work on these stories.
I have not seen that Jardin has appeared on another platform. I’m guessing she is taking a break, like she did for a couple months this Spring. She has health challenges but seems to have a happy life in southern Utah.
I’m not sure Jardin would call herself a journalist now; she was more of a concerned citizen still trying to understand herself and her past. Jardin was part of the team running the tech-adjacent journal Boing!Boing! but left abruptly February, 2021. She told her followers that she was well and referred questions about her departure to the journal. “My future plans,” Jardin tweeted, “include weed and shitposting.”
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Do you happen to have gift article? I can’t open that, but it looks like it would be a fun read.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Aussie Sheila: The novelist Iris Murdoch talks about some people becoming good from the outside in. That is, laws and norms force them to act like a better person, and gradually, that becomes a habit. So, yeah, she’d agree with you.
I’d have to think a bit about comedians like Chapelle who make us laugh by violating norms. Where’s the line in that?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ruckus: Preach it
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: damn you, I can’t un-read that
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I love Gregor. He looks all cool and repressed but then he’ll say something like that. I guess if you’re Emperor of Barrayar you need both restraint and the ability to take a risk
New Deal democrat
Fortunately the video of Musk being booed is freely available on Mastodon:
https://mstdn.social/@leahmcelrath/109500771354035300
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
You shouldn’t. It’s important that all good and right thinking people understand how vital it is we protect her from being Musked so we can get at least a 2nd Series of Wednesday under our belts.
Priorities, people.
Suzanne
Eh. I can look away from Elon Musk. Trump had power, Elon (at least right now) only has attention.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Sometimes norms are bad. Invidious prejudices are norms. Class, race, gender oppression runs on norms as much as laws. Cultural liberalism to a large degree is about busting unfair norms that conservatives regard as the bedrock of civilization–that’s what freaks them out so much.
But it’s also about establishing new ones, built on fairness and consideration for others regardless of identity; and when your whole act is busting norms, the ones that seem a little novel and weird to the average person eventually become tempting targets. It’s a trap.
Nicole
@The Thin Black Duke:
I watched clips of his SNL appearance, including a parody of House of the Dragon that was an excuse to trot out some of his most memorable characters from Chappelle Show. Most of them haven’t aged well. It was a bummer.
Geminid
@New Deal democrat: The comments are interesting. I liked the one from @ArniGoldshlager(sp?):
Cameron
Wouldn’t that be the night before Orthodox Christmas?
@mrmoshpotato:
Tony Jay
@Aussie Sheila:
This is true, but as long as they keep making money out of it (either directly or through it making profit possible in other areas) it’s not going anywhere.
Sigh.
Quinerly
Good morning! Haven’t read all the comments. Has anyone mentioned that Elon as of yesterday is no longer the richest person in the world? Knocked back to #2.
I highly recommend that long article re MTG that came out last week. Traces her life and background. I think it was in The Atlantic. Mostly lurk now and don’t read that many comments so maybe it has been mentioned.
JoJo las Orejas😎 and I are packing for our 3 week trip to AZ next week. First stop is my beloved Window Rock. Was last thru there when Covid was creeping up on us March, 2020 when on my way to Canyon de Chelly. From Window Rock on to Tuba City taking that route across Hopi Lands and will need to keep my eye on weather. Last thru there March, 2017. From there, down to Cameron and the Grand Canyon. Christmas Eve and Christmas in Winslow. I added a cheap camper cabin after Christmas at Dead Horse Ranch State Park for a few nights. Then up to Flagstaff for New Years. Coming back to NM by way of Payson and Show Lo. If anyone has suggestions on restaurants and quirky stuff, feel free to get my email from a front pager and email me. The camper cabin is my base for Sedona, Jerome, and Prescott areas. Most of this trip is a retrace of a 2017 trip. I actually remember the “On the Road” threads were launched around that time with my traveling dog (Poco) at the time being featured at the Petrified Forest. Commenters were so very helpful with traveling stops for us. I got worried our morning threads were turning into travel suggestions for Quinerly and Poco that I messaged Alan that BJ needed threads dedicated to travel stuff. With that said, Payson and Show Low areas will be all new to us. Feel free to send me suggestions by way of email. Thanks!
Kay
Amusing. A whole thread of influential anti-woke conservative activists vehemently denying they are conservatives and insisting they are either liberals, Leftists, or “centrists”. Why not just come out as conservatives? Better yet- come out as Republicans. Their work and opinions are indistinguishable from what the Republican Party apparatus churns out, for free, every day. Why pay for antiwoke commentary? You can get the same “analysis” and “humor” from Ted Cruz’s Twitter.
Quinerly
@Aussie Sheila:
AL is absolutely the best. We are so lucky to have her. She rocks!
Kay
What is the difference between the antiwoke content people pay for and the antiwoke content DeSantis and his team of political operatives in Florida churn out daily?
Just watch a DeSantis press conference and save on tickets to antiwoke stand up shows and antiwoke Substack subscriptions. It’s identical.
Quinerly
@Ruckus: such a great post! Now I remember why I used to spend so much time reading all the comments on almost every thread. In glancing thru threads the last few weeks, seems like we have lost a lot of regulars, though. Have a great day!
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
That’s the only link I have. It was sent to me by a subscriber, and I thought it was shareable.
Quinerly
@mrmoshpotato: 💜
E.
@Quinerly: I have spent a good deal of time working in and around Payson, Show Low, and Springerville, and my advice would be to avoid them all. The Mazatzal Wilderness near Payson is extraordinary but challenging to get to. If there isn’t snow and your rig is good there is a nice route to the Verde River via the town of Strawberry. If I had more than a couple days to spend in Show Low I would spend them next door in the Gila.
ETA the trip to the Verde is a rough drive followed by a decent hike. Not a day trip.
Kay
Pronouns! Bossy (lady) governors enforcing covid restrictions! Unions bosses running schools and imposing Critical Race Theory! Be Very Afraid of Crime!
How is any of the antiwoke content different than what the entire Republican Party appartus says every single day?
They should just be Republicans. They’ll be completely comfortable in that party.
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
My metric is whether they are punching up or punching down. On his hit show Chappelle was punching up, but now he has devolved to punching down—at trans people, at the people in the “cheap seats” booing Elon Musk, etc.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I’ve noticed a pattern of self-identified hard leftists hammering very hard on the idea that “horseshoe theory” is bullshit, then pushing anti-gun-control and anti-shitlib memes in left online fora where obvious MAGA Republicans would get dogpiled and/or banned in a microsecond.
Quinerly
@The Thin Black Duke:
I adored him years and years ago. Somehow he lost his way quite awhile ago.
Scout211
The SEC is charging SBF with defrauding investors.
Suzanne
@Quinerly: Can you get up to Greer? I love it up there.
Matt McIrvin
There are people who became attached to “the left” for one reason or another who are really chaos Muppets, dedicated to freaking the squares and not being told what to do. They’re useful when the squares are advocating something evil. They’re also the ones who are most likely to go “anti-woke” sooner or later.
The left broadly construed acquired a lot of these people during the George W. Bush years and now a bunch of them have gone straight fascist in the name of chaos.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Yup. Vehement denials while essentially parroting Ted Cruz.
Well, they have their own celebrity-leader now, just like Trumpsters. They can all bow down to Elon Musk.
Quinerly
@E.: thanks!
Payson and Show Low got added a couple of weeks ago for my return to Santa Fe, where I now live. Meeting a friend from Texas (originally from Tucson) in Pinetop, AZ. Her parents used to live there and she suggested meeting there. She’sin the process of moving to Cerrillos, NM, near me. It’s mostly a drive thru, weather permitting, for 2-4 days. Thinking of revisting Zuni and Ramah, NM areas after.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Watching Matt Taibbi fluff a Dickensian tyrant billionaire has been amazing.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: It’s a well-trodden path too, so they’re not even original. Previous generations horked up David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens. An inclination toward chaos may be part of it, but Kay’s theory about neo-reactionaries responding to a loss of cultural relevance rings true to me.
Quinerly
@Suzanne: need to pull out my trusty atlas.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
For a time I read “TERFS” on Twitter – feminists (mostly British) who are opposed to rights for trans people. I ran onto them because I read feminists. I noticed they had completely abandoned any activism or advocacy on feminism – womens rights- because they had become completely consumed with opposing trans rights.
I see the same thing with the horseshoe Leftists. They do no work or advocacy for Left issues because they are so busy being “contrarian” (supposedly) supporters of the far Right.
New Deal democrat
@Steeplejack: “ My metric is whether they are punching up or punching down.”
That’s more or less my line as well, but for me it is more, Are they making fun of a behavior or an identity? The former is funny, the letter is not. Also, are they making fun of stereotypical behaviors of their own racial/ethnic/religious group or of others? The former can be funny, the latter usually is not.
Matt McIrvin
I think that while Obama becoming President might have driven the right mad, a lot of the “anti-woke” horseshoe/dirtbag left people were specifically driven into a bad dimension by Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic nominee for President. Or at least it brought certain tendencies to the foreground.
Quinerly
@Matt McIrvin: naimed it.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly right. There’s a lot of people who were really attracted to a more social liberal outlook (if not policy) because they just want to be edgy, and their self-concept is about finding whatever is mainstream and being anti-that thing. They don’t really mesh well with those of us who were really looking for a way to make society kinder and more welcoming to marginalized people.
FWIW, as someone who has absolutely no power over anything, I just don’t know why anyone would choose to be a dick. Like, yeah, I guess I’m an old-school free speech defender, in that I think you should have the right to be a dick. But I also have the right to think you’re a dick and not want to be around dicks, and not buy stuff from dicks.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Yes, I was going to add that the Sixties counterculture produced a whole raft of these “left” people who eventually became theatrical reactionaries. (As well as driving some older, “square” liberals to reaction because they couldn’t understand them.)
Anne Laurie
Too tired to google it now, but there was at least one study! Back in the early 1980s, IIRC: College students who expressed racist views were paid to say Not Racist things, interact with Not Racist people, other mild forms of behavior modification.
After a while, most of those students did (per ‘hidden bias’ testing) significantly moderate their racist statements, at least.
The general takeaway (again: as I remember it, from all those years ago) was that ‘Maybe we can’t moderate what’s in their *hearts*, but we can train them not to be pests to other people!’
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Anne Laurie: Good way to put it. And as jackals have often noted, Trump told them to let their freak flags fly
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie: “Fake it till you make it” is a popular aphorism in the self-help industry–that behaving-as-if can lead to actual internal changes. It’s perhaps not as magical as claimed but I think there’s something to it.
oatler
@Matt McIrvin:
‘Chaos Muppets’ Just the phrase I wanted when reading of Boebert’s win. What did she do besides imitate The Swedish Chef and Sam Eagle simutaneously?
Geminid
@Quinerly: I wish you and your pup a safe and happy trip!
If you want to appear “in the know,” tell people you’ll be spending New Years in “Flag.” My late friend Chris drove a truck many times down I-40 to “Cali.” I learned a lot from Chris, and one thing was that Flagstaff is “Flag” in trucker lingo.
geg6
So Rachel Maddow and Morning Joe led off with the TPM scoop. Yeah, other outlets had reported parts of it previously, but nobody had taken the time to really analyze any of it and put it all into context. This is really great work from Marshall and TPM. Makes my subscription very much worth it to see my money doing great work.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: I attended a Jerry Rubin lecture at UK in late 70s. He was a smug dickhead I thought.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Agree — context is such an important part of effective journalism, and often in short supply these days.
Quinerly
@Geminid: 🧡
Matt McIrvin
@oatler: I got it from a typology of Muppet characters generally that divided them into “Order Muppets” (Kermit, Bert, Sam the Eagle) and “Chaos Muppets” (Animal, The Swedish Chef, Ernie, Cookie Monster). I think there’s a further division into those who willingly sow chaos and the hapless types who unintentionally bring chaos upon themselves (Gonzo, Grover).
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: I hated that. Fuck the New Yorker.
Sanjeevs
https://www.ft.com/content/d03d6abe-b305-4e45-b528-01f93671b4be
US consumer price inflation fell more than expected in November to its lowest level in a year, bolstering the Federal Reserve’s plans to slow down the rate of interest rate rises and sending US stock futures and government bonds soaring.
The consumer price index (CPI) moderated to an annual pace of 7.1 per cent last month, lower than the 7.3 per cent forecasted by economists and down from the 7.7 per cent pace registered in October. That is the lowest level since December 2021. Compared to the previous month, overall CPI rose 0.1 per cent, less than October’s 0.4 per cent increase.
Ken
He claims he doesn’t know where the money went, but I’m sure the forensic accountants that work for the DOJ will help him find it.
(And “disgorgement” has to be somewhere on the top 10 list of legal terms that sound obscene.)
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@WaterGirl: Adding a dot after “.com” (so it becomes “.com.”) sometimes works.
E.
@Matt McIrvin: Forty years ago Christopher Lasch wrote a whole book a out this. The Culture of Narcissism.
tobie
@Matt McIrvin: Are there lots of Taibbi types out there? I know since 2016 we’ve heard a loud chorus of holier than thou leftists who complain incessantly about the establishment and corporate Dems. Heck, Bernie revived that last line just a few days ago to describe Sinema, while ignoring the irony that she left the Democratic Party and became an independent (like him) because she’s a corporatist. Still I was hoping that Taibbi was sui generis.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: I’d put Glenn Greenwald and the Assange/Snowden fan club in the same category. These people are not even leftists, really, but got lumped in with them as a term of convenience in the 2000s. They got categorized as far leftists because they were opposing the whole mainstream.
And there was that whole period when The Nation was pushing the “Putin is just the counterbalance to US imperialism/Russiagate is a hoax” line.
In comedy specifically, there are a lot of these guys who had vaguely progressive cred some years ago but either got weirdly upset about trans people or had some kind of scandal: Chapelle, Louis CK, Graham Linehan, Ricky Gervais. For the British ones it probably wasn’t about Hillary Clinton.
Subsole
I am sure several folks have already pointed this out, but in fairness to the audience, Chapelle never specified what type of noise he wanted folks to make…
As a comedian of my younger years once said,
“Gotcha, bitch!”
tobie
@Matt McIrvin: Gawd, my powers of repression are better than I imagined. I had completely forgotten about Glen Greenwald! Yes, you’re right that Assange and also Tulsi Gabbard fit the mold. Ryan Grim and the Intercept crowd likely would too.
Denali
What Tony Jay said. And thank you Musk for sucking up the media attention so that we are not still daily faced with TFG.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: Kyrsten Sinema is an odd case in that, if you break it down in theoretical ideological terms, she’s almost the opposite, a parody of what most of these people imagine to be the very worst of normie Democratic liberalism: a cultural liberal who is also a committed plutocrat.
But she comes from the same place, started out as a Green, and she has the same histrionic tendencies. And she’s not in the mainstream of the Democratic Party at all; she’s shanking the mainstream in the back.
Raoul Paste
@Steeplejack: that’s a really good observation
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Matt McIrvin: She’s still in the F*****g Around phase.
The Finding Out phase is pending.
Miss Bianca
@mrmoshpotato: January 6 is also known as Epiphany Day. That seems symbolically correct to me.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
But it does fit what Brave New World was predicting with the Feellies.
1984, were everyone is lying all of the time for the sake of lying to the point no one knows what is reality anymore does fit today’s Russia.
Ellenr
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Gods, I love those books……
Matt McIrvin
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: Unfortunately we ALL get to find out.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
I want to correct something…. I see this a lot, about Sinema starting “as a Green”. Her first race, she didn’t even officially run as the Greens’ candidate. She ran “independent affiliated with the Green Party” or some bullshit because the field was crowded. Please do not make the error of thinking that she has moved politically.
She has never had principles. Not ever. She didn’t have them and then fall away from them. She never had them to begin with. She has always and will always be an attention monster first, and every decision she has ever made in her public life is sensible if you look at it that way.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: The big wreckers in the Bernie crowd, some of whom went to the Jill Stein movement or to Jacobin to snipe at liberals while Trump was wrecking the country: Sirota, Nina Turner, Briahna Joy Gray. Interestingly, not all of them were white men.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Yeah, I guess the key is that ideology isn’t even really the important thing about Sinema.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Everyone who knows her says that she is smart and ruthless. She is a climber and everything she has ever done has been in service of the climb.
She may at one time have aligned herself more with the Green Party, but she was never a believer. Even before last week, she’s barely been a Democrat. She never showed up at Party meetings, never supported any other campaigns downballot, nothing. She’s just a black hole.
catothedog
@Rusty:
There was a good post a week or so ago on LGM about aesthetics, culture and politics. Worth reading. One of the quotes in there was
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/12/political-aesthetics-and-twitter-fascism
piratedan
@Quinerly: there’s more than a good bit to see and do around there… I believe that there’s a state park that offers a lovely Natural Bridge just north on Payson on AZ 87.
in Payson, I would recommend Macky’s Grill for lunch and/or dinner.
If you enjoy low key, I’ve always had a great brekkie at the Pinon Cafe on the south side of town.
on the drive across from Payson to Pinetop, it’s mostly forest and campgrounds as you’re in National Forest country all along the Rim until you get to the Heber/Overgaard Area. Pretty though and great road, should be clear most of the time.
You’ll also be somewhat close to the White Mountain Apache ski resort out there, it’s pretty awesome with high meadows and oodles of trees although with a good eye, you can see where some of the wildfires of the past few years have spawned up.
Depending on your timeframe and agenda, on the south side of the Petrified Forest National Park, there’s a family that lives adjacent to the park that has some property that allows you to scour your own petrified wood if you’re inclined. Ping me and I can scare up some of that info for you.
Let me know if you’re looking for stuff to do in Holbrook, as I am more familiar with that area due to the spouse riding the Pedal The Petrified event that happens yearly to support the Northern AZ Community College system.
kindness
The Chase Center is a huge basketball arena. Steep sides & tiny seats. I’m a bit shocked Dave Chapelle could sell out the place. I wouldn’t go. I don’t even like going there to see major touring bands as there is no parking in Mission Bay and public transit has only one line going through that area. Having said that I’ve gone there several times.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@NotMax: It’s there to make you think of Old Navy.
Apparently her fans love it. It has despoiled too many hockey games on Hulu to have a positive effect on me.
Quinerly
@piratedan: this is great! I will email you. Thanks so much.
George
@Quinerly: If you have never visited Two Guns, Arizona, and the adjacent Apache death cave, it is a quirky place to stop on your travels. There also is an abandoned gas station and campground nearby that have interesting graffiti, or at least had interesting graffiti the last time I passed through there in the spring of 2020. The legend of the death cave is interesting. You can crawl down into the cave and walk to the back, until the walls get too narrow for passage.
Quinerly
@George: this sounds cool. Pulling out my AZ atlas. Thanks!
Dadadadadadada
@Aussie Sheila: To my ear, Chappelle sounded genuinely aggrieved by the reception Musk got. He took Musk’s side against the audience.
Dadadadadadada
@NotMax: That is correct. Which makes it pretty telling that his transphobic/indifferent audience swung so hard against the transphove-in-chief.
Dadadadadadada
@WereBear: I reread Peter Pan about a year ago and you’re 100% right. It’s practically a horror novel. I blame Disney for airbrushing all the grimness out if it.
Chetan Murthy
@Anne Laurie: This is (in a way) the thesis of _A Clockwork Orange_: that we become good by being behaviourally modified by our parents — punished for bad behaviours, rewarded for good ones. That there is no “innate” goodness, only learned behaviours.
I subscribe to this thesis.
The Lodger
@Kay: Who is this jamoke and do I have any reason to care?