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You are here: Home / Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift / Thursday Evening Open Thread: You Can’t “Debate” A Professional Wingnut

Thursday Evening Open Thread: You Can’t “Debate” A Professional Wingnut

by Anne Laurie|  March 16, 20235:55 pm| 116 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment

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Jonathan Chait, who I do not support, is right to defend Bethany Mandel, who I do not support, for faltering under the brutally tough questioning of drone-loving M$DNC shitlib Briahna Joy Gray.

by Glenn Greenwald

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) March 15, 2023

It’s all about performance for these chickenshites. Either they’ll shout you down with a Gish gallop of lies and lurid phantasies, or they’ll whine bitterly about how meeeaaann you are (and probably use deceptively edited clips to fundraise from their followers).

Senator Sanders’ former press secretary Briahna Joy Gray, currently making what I’m told is a nice living from her own podcast, invited preeminent right-wing victimology performer Bethany Mandel to ‘discuss’ Mandel’s new book on wokeness. Despite her recent research, when pressed on-air, Mandel proved incapable of defining wokeness… because she knew better than to say ‘Anything that makes me uncomfortable, especially anything that suggests Those People might hold opinions at odds with the revered shibboleths of my deeply conservative ideology’, and she hadn’t bothered to prepare anything less offensive to normie book-buyers.

I was discussing this clip with Kay in the comments last night:

I’ve written posts about Bethany Mandel before; she’s the ‘point person’ for testing the latest terrible right-wing ideas before her bigger-megaphone comrades start using them. If they flop (she was responsible for the ‘If it means I can take my kids to the park, call me a grandma-killer’ tweet at the start of lockdowns in 2020), she can take a year or two off, because her husband is a high-dollar think tank official and she’s technically ‘a full-time, stay-at-home mommy’.

For the same reason, anyone who contradicts her wildly dishonest narratives… is being mean to a mother, which just goes to show all lie-berals hate kids, also the flag and probably apple pie.

My personal suspicion, cuz I’m a Cynic, is that BrieBrie’s ‘takedown’ has already been snipped & circulated by the right-wing wurlitzer as an example of how those nasty leftist colored ladies will attack decent God-fearing conservatives…

Sure enough, just a few hours later:
You Can't "Debate" A Professional Wingnut - STOCKPILE
Including a newborn! Brutally attacking the mother of a newborn! Oh, the inhumanity!

“she’s not an idiot”: pic.twitter.com/1SizQUgszy

— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) March 15, 2023


She’s not an idiot, she’s just a self-centered monster. But a very well-compensated monster, so who are we to judge her?

Sometimes when people say "woke" they mean "liberals being self-righteous and vicious about trivial things" and sometimes they mean "integration," or "civil rights laws" or "black people on television" and it's convenient not to have to explain what you actually mean.

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) March 15, 2023

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    116Comments

    1. 1.

      schrodingers_cat

      March 16, 2023 at 5:58 pm

      Miss the days when DougJ used to post here. Also too, if argue with a professional wingnut it is not to persuade him but people in his audience open to persuasion.

      Reply
    2. 2.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:00 pm

      I’m out of the media loop. How does Mandel end up on Gray’s program in the first place?

      Reply
    3. 3.

      schrodingers_cat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:00 pm

      Woke = aware and considerate

      Not woke = Cruel and ignorant.

      These RWNJs and sometimes white tankie bros want to be cruel and ignorant but don’t want to be called on it.

      Reply
    4. 4.

      schrodingers_cat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:01 pm

      @Baud: Horseshoe. Red roses think that they have more in common with Red hats rather than Ds. This is the pet theory of many in the BS orbit. It has no basis in reality but that doesn’t matter much to ideologues.

      Reply
    5. 5.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:02 pm

      @schrodingers_cat:

      I didn’t listen to this podcast. Did they talk about hating Dems too?

      Reply
    6. 6.

      schrodingers_cat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:03 pm

      @Baud: Neither did I. Cheez Cheez is always hating on Ds, check her Twitter timeline. So its an educated guess.

      Reply
    7. 7.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:04 pm

      @schrodingers_cat:

      I prefer my Twitter screened by Anne Laurie.

      Reply
    8. 8.

      schrodingers_cat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:07 pm

      @Baud: Good choice, I have Bree Bree blocked since 2020.

      Reply
    9. 9.

      UncleEbeneezer

      March 16, 2023 at 6:08 pm

      I refuse to cheer for Brie Brie.  You can’t make me.

      Reply
    10. 10.

      Frankensteinbeck

      March 16, 2023 at 6:09 pm

      The ‘trivial things’ are all variations of tolerance of diversity.  Serwer is exactly right that ‘woke’ lets them use a word they think sounds insulting and not have to say it’s opposition to bigotry they hate.  Admitting they are opposed to opposing bigotry sounds like a weak position even in their ears.

      Reply
    11. 11.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:10 pm

      @Frankensteinbeck:

      Nothing new.  They used to use “family values” to mean “hating gay people.”

      Reply
    12. 12.

      UncleEbeneezer

      March 16, 2023 at 6:11 pm

      Brie Joy Gray has a *long* history of maligning “wokeness” on the left. So it’s fascinating to watch her deploy it here to trip someone up when criticizing…the left.

      Reply
    13. 13.

      Frankensteinbeck

      March 16, 2023 at 6:12 pm

      @Baud:

      Yep.  It’s ‘family values’ plus ‘let’s go Brandon’.  ‘Woke’ is a silly sounding word, so they get their elementary school bully laugh.  It’s so… pathetic.

      Reply
    14. 14.

      pat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:13 pm

      I saw some of that ..MSNBC?

      How on earth can you write an entire “book” about WOKE and not be able to define it??

      Jeez.  Here’s my definition:  If you are “woke” you are accepting of others.

      Woke= acceptance.

      Reply
    15. 15.

      Raoul Paste

      March 16, 2023 at 6:13 pm

      @schrodingers_cat: Succinct and well put

      Reply
    16. 16.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:14 pm

      Out: Woke

      In: Wakey-wakey!

      Reply
    17. 17.

      pat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:14 pm

      @schrodingers_cat: ​
       

      That too.

      Reply
    18. 18.

      Frankensteinbeck

      March 16, 2023 at 6:14 pm

      @pat:

      That’s why they can’t define it.  It’s not that they don’t know what it means.  Defining it out loud makes it clear they’re asshole bigots.

      Reply
    19. 19.

      Anoniminous

      March 16, 2023 at 6:14 pm

      “Woke” implies rectifying historic and current wrongs which implies change and all change is for the worse to Right Wing Authoritarians.

      Reply
    20. 20.

      UncleEbeneezer

      March 16, 2023 at 6:15 pm

      @Frankensteinbeck: Every term of derision they choose, you can bet your house that it actually refers to: any/all effort to make life better for those people (Black people, Women, LGBTQ, Immigrants etc.)

      Reply
    21. 21.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 6:16 pm

      @schrodingers_cat: As I’ve said, democrats and republicans have one thing in common: republicans hate democrats, and so do democrats.

      Reply
    22. 22.

      pat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:17 pm

      @Frankensteinbeck: ​
       
      yep.

      Reply
    23. 23.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 6:17 pm

      Whom among us has not written an entire book about a subject one cannot define?

      Reply
    24. 24.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:17 pm

      @different-church-lady:

      Not wrong in general, but I don’t think Gray consideres herself a Democrat.

      Reply
    25. 25.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:18 pm

      @different-church-lady:

      Are you counting autobiographies?

      Reply
    26. 26.

      Frankensteinbeck

      March 16, 2023 at 6:20 pm

      @different-church-lady:

      Whom among us has not written an entire book about a subject one cannot define?

      That’s pretty much what I do for a living.  Good?  Bad?  Hero?  Villain?  Life?  Humanity?  Love?  Adulthood?  The right thing to do?  Shit’s complicated, man.  Here’s a bunch of edge case examples, good luck.

      Reply
    27. 27.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 6:20 pm

      @Baud: only the ones you write about yourself.

      Reply
    28. 28.

      schrodingers_cat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:21 pm

      @UncleEbeneezer: You and me both. Even a broken clock..

      Reply
    29. 29.

      Shalimar

      March 16, 2023 at 6:21 pm

      Ok, how come when I follow a link to Twitter, most of the other tweets it thinks I will be interested in are porn?  I don’t follow anyone making porn or look at porn anywhere in at least several years.

      Reply
    30. 30.

      pat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:22 pm

      @different-church-lady: ​

      @different-church-lady: ​
      sorry for the double reply.  I was planning to diagram that sentence and then thought oh what the heck.

       

      Jeez then I lost my first reply:  It’s WHO not WHOM.

      Reply
    31. 31.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 6:22 pm

      @pat: ALL INTERNET TRADITIONS, BUSTER!

      Reply
    32. 32.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:25 pm

      @different-church-lady:

      Inscrutable: A Memoir by Baud.

      Reply
    33. 33.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:26 pm

      @Shalimar:

      Elon has to make money somehow.

      Reply
    34. 34.

      Old Man Shadow

      March 16, 2023 at 6:27 pm

      and sometimes they mean “integration,” or “civil rights laws” or “black people on television”

      It’s not sometimes, Dude. It’s all of the time.

      These folks have a real hard-on for the 1600’s when the “world” was white, conservative Christian, more authoritarian, and male. They have no love for civil rights, democracy, or America as it is. They yearn for a “pure” America where rich, white, male aristocrats run society and are catered to by everyone: politics, culture, entertainment, etc.

      Reply
    35. 35.

      UncleEbeneezer

      March 16, 2023 at 6:30 pm

      Here is a really excellent interview with Michelle Nickerson, author of Mothers Of Conservatism:

      “which explores the lives and political activism of conservative women in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s and 1950s. Unlike many other conversations on the show, this one is less about intellectuals and ideas than it is about social history—a description of how, as Nickerson puts it, housewife activists worked to “protect the nation from aliens, internationalism, and power-hungry bureaucrats in Washington.” Topics include: the Great Depression and the rise of “housewife populism,” conservative bookstores and “Americanism” centers run by women, the networks of activism that conservative women built and deployed, fierce battles over public education, the menace of psychiatry and the social sciences in shaping education policy, and more.”

      My interest is mainly because they discuss The Pasadena Affair and how that became the right-wing template for these school fights over curriculum that we are still seeing today and because I want to possibly read the book.

      Reply
    36. 36.

      Dangerman

      March 16, 2023 at 6:31 pm

      Arizona goes down. SC should go down. This is a lovely Round of 64.

      Reply
    37. 37.

      eversor

      March 16, 2023 at 6:32 pm

      Woke is not a thing in reality.  It’s just random slang from the past packaged up and resold as whatever.

      @Frankensteinbeck:

      Woke is the new secularists.

      Reply
    38. 38.

      Geminid

      March 16, 2023 at 6:32 pm

      @schrodingers_cat: Ever since I saw that weird video Briahnn Joy Gray made, where she wobbled around gloating “That’s right, I voted for Jill fu*king Stein,” I call her Cray-Cray.

      Reply
    39. 39.

      UncleEbeneezer

      March 16, 2023 at 6:35 pm

      @Shalimar: Do you have an account?  Or are you viewing it without an account?  I use my Indivisible group’s Twitter account that someone else set up before I joined and I think she set the controls very tight so I never see p*rn suggestions, but I’ve heard from others that there’s tons of it on Twitter.  Most people like p*rn, even though they won’t admit it, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Elon’s Freeze Peach Twitter now just shovels dirty links towards anyone who doesn’t have barriers already set up to block them.

      Reply
    40. 40.

      Geminid

      March 16, 2023 at 6:36 pm

      Marcy Wheeler sure had fun dragging Glem Greenwalt through a dozen tweets. She likes to call him Area Sub Stacker, but after a couple entries she referred to him by the acronym “ASS.”

      Reply
    41. 41.

      schrodingers_cat

      March 16, 2023 at 6:37 pm

      @Geminid: It fits!

      Reply
    42. 42.

      chopper

      March 16, 2023 at 6:39 pm

      wow, bethany, briahna was saying mean things about parents? hoo boy, it must really suck to have people demean your identity and your lifestyle i wonder what it must be like

      Reply
    43. 43.

      Joseph Patrick Lurker

      March 16, 2023 at 6:42 pm

      She’s not an idiot

      No, Bethany Mandel is an idiot and her excuse that she was rattled by Briahna Joy Gray’s hot mic comments is absolute bullshit.  Briahna Joy Gray is a far better interviewer and has a much more pleasant personality than her Hill Rising predecessor Krystal Ball who is deeply repulsive.

      Reply
    44. 44.

      Dan B

      March 16, 2023 at 6:47 pm

      OT but about a wingnut.  Milo Yiannopolis just posted the most misogynistic rant I’ve ever read. He was “studying” women per his therapist’s suggestion and decided that they want to kill you a couple days each month and he blamed his mother for making him gay. And those were just a couple of highlights.  JoeMyGod blog has it if you want to punish yourself.

      Reply
    45. 45.

      Wyatt Salamanca

      March 16, 2023 at 6:47 pm

      @Geminid:

      There are few things more pleasing than seeing Marcy Wheeler wipe the floor with that insufferable asshole Glenn Greenwald.

      Reply
    46. 46.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:48 pm

      @Dan B:

      So you’re saying he’s not woke.

      Reply
    47. 47.

      narya

      March 16, 2023 at 6:48 pm

      @Baud: Or wake-and-bake, at least going by the clouds through which I walk some mornings . . .

      Reply
    48. 48.

      Kay

      March 16, 2023 at 6:48 pm

      The “natalist” thing on the Right is creepy and they’re going to foist it on all women- don’t say I didn’t warn you. Women who don’t have children are the next Enemies of America.

      Reply
    49. 49.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 6:50 pm

      @Kay:

      It’s like the Chinese new year.  They just cycle through different Enemies rather than animals.

      Reply
    50. 50.

      Dan B

      March 16, 2023 at 6:50 pm

      @Baud:  You got that!  He needs thorazine as well.

      Reply
    51. 51.

      Anoniminous

      March 16, 2023 at 6:55 pm

      @Dan B:

      THANK YOU!

      I was looking for his blog earlier today and simply couldn’t pull the name out of memory.

      Reply
    52. 52.

      Frankensteinbeck

      March 16, 2023 at 6:55 pm

      @Dan B:

      Wow.  That was an experience.  The text was bad enough.  The subtext that he has no concept of a romantic relationship that involves emotional bonds or equality was even worse.

      Reply
    53. 53.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 6:56 pm

      @Dan B: let’s be fair: women probably do want to kill him at least a few days a month.

      Reply
    54. 54.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 6:57 pm

      Someone ought to also ask them to define the opposite of woke.

      Reply
    55. 55.

      Geminid

      March 16, 2023 at 7:00 pm

      @different-church-lady: The opposite is “Volk.”

      As in “They’re Woke, and We’re Volk.”

      Reply
    56. 56.

      Sure Lurkalot

      March 16, 2023 at 7:00 pm

      After getting trolled on Twitter, Bethany came up with this definition:

      A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the end point, enforced by an angry mob.

      ANGRY MOB, I’M MOTHER OF SIX VICTIM OF AN ANGRY MOB CRAMMING COURTESY AND CIVILITY DOWN MY THROAT!

      Reply
    57. 57.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 7:01 pm

      @Sure Lurkalot:

      Pfft. All our mobs are happy and gay.

      Reply
    58. 58.

      Llelldorin

      March 16, 2023 at 7:03 pm

      @Baud: Well, they had to pretend it had always meant only “gay people” after using it to mean “working mothers” became utterly radioactive.

      Reply
    59. 59.

      Kay

      March 16, 2023 at 7:06 pm

      This type of extremist right-wing nationalism, focused on fertility and firm boundaries as to who fall within and outside of the national community, is popular in other authoritarian and illiberalizing states. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government launched nationalized IVF programs to combat the country’s staggering 1.23 fertility rate—a program that explicitly excludes gay women from participation. In Poland, where abortion access has become so restricted that it has reportedly led to deaths, proposals have been put forward to create a digital registry for tracking pregnancies and miscarriages.

      Reply
    60. 60.

      Shalimar

      March 16, 2023 at 7:08 pm

      @UncleEbeneezer: I do have a Twitter account and am logged in, but I have tweeted maybe 5 times total and go weeks without getting bored enough to look at the people I follow.

      Reply
    61. 61.

      Dorothy A. Winsor

      March 16, 2023 at 7:13 pm

      We just watched Ari Melber, who reported on a proposed Florida textbook that told the story of Rosa Parks without mentioning her race. She was just a woman who was told to move to a different bus seat and didn’t want to. I have trouble taking this in. It’s so blatantly racist. Also stupid. Now I’m depressed.

      Reply
    62. 62.

      BlueGuitarist

      March 16, 2023 at 7:23 pm

      Saw today a large sign – “Trump: the Great Awakening”
      wondered for a moment if these trumpers were
      waking up to cognitive dissonance.
      But instead of thinking about
      what goes on in their minds,
      thought of “you may be awoken” in
      The Beatles “And your bird can sing,”
      the contagious giggling version

      https://youtu.be/bf22VR71ags

      the guitar parts and the sound of The Beatles.
      https://youtu.be/9g2eU9YGwWQ

      Reply
    63. 63.

      UncleEbeneezer

      March 16, 2023 at 7:27 pm

      @Sure Lurkalot: What US institution wasn’t built around the discrimination, exploitation, subjugation of people who were Black, Indigenous, Women, Poor, Immigrants etc?  I can’t think of any.

      Reply
    64. 64.

      Brachiator

      March 16, 2023 at 7:27 pm

      @UncleEbeneezer:

      a description of how, as Nickerson puts it, housewife activists worked to “protect the nation from aliens, internationalism, and power-hungry bureaucrats in Washington.” Topics include: the Great Depression and the rise of “housewife populism,” conservative bookstores and “Americanism” centers run by women, the networks of activism that conservative women built and deployed, fierce battles over public education, the menace of psychiatry and the social sciences in shaping education policy, and more.”

      I remember watching some of the documentary film footage of cigar-chomping housewives carrying a cross and a statue of the Baby Jesus as they engaged in vicious hand-to-hand combat with their enemies during the Battle of Van Nuys Blvd.

      Their opponents would toss flaming copies of Dr Spock’s “Baby and Child Care” over the trenches.

      Reply
    65. 65.

      Jeffro

      March 16, 2023 at 7:28 pm

      I highly recommend Jason Stanley’s “How Fascism Works” and think that reporters & commentators should keep it handy at all times.

      Gray, for instance, could have just pulled it out and said to Mandel, “Oh…so you need to brush up on your #2” for the tv appearance and then just responded “See, here’s some serious #6!” to Mandel’s tweet.

      (Propaganda techniques and victimhood, respectively)

      Reply
    66. 66.

      Brachiator

      March 16, 2023 at 7:32 pm

      @Dorothy A. Winsor:

      We just watched Ari Melber, who reported on a proposed Florida textbook that told the story of Rosa Parks without mentioning her race. She was just a woman who was told to move to a different bus seat and didn’t want to.

      They identified her as a woman? Isn’t that illegal?

      Reply
    67. 67.

      Dan B

      March 16, 2023 at 7:33 pm

      @different-church-lady: Reportedly GOP women don’t want to marry ex-gays.  Who knew?

      Murder them… hmmm…

      Reply
    68. 68.

      Baud

      March 16, 2023 at 7:34 pm

      @Brachiator:

      “The story about how white men defeated woke segregation.”

      Reply
    69. 69.

      Sherparick

      March 16, 2023 at 7:35 pm

      @UncleEbeneezer: It was completely unintentional in my opinion. Brie thought she was giving Bethany a softball in my opinion. And she whiffed.

      Reply
    70. 70.

      Dorothy A. Winsor

      March 16, 2023 at 7:37 pm

      @Brachiator: Probably.

      This is so 1984

      Reply
    71. 71.

      Anne Laurie

      March 16, 2023 at 7:40 pm

      @Dan B: Milo Yiannopolis just posted the most misogynistic rant I’ve ever read.

      I read it; it’s just marketing.  There isn’t a phrase in Milo’s ‘rant’ that hasn’t been circulating on ‘mens rights / men going their own way’ forums since blogs were state-of-the-art social media.  Milo is no more likely to give up being gay than I am to give up eating dark chocolate, but publicly complaining about Ick, women!!! will (he believes) make his ongoing life-grift more attractive to resentful straight men looking for affirmation.  See, even the queers can’t stand how chicks act!

      It’s a pretty desperate new low, even for Milo, but it’s not as though he’s got the capacity to come up with anything original.

      Reply
    72. 72.

      Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

      March 16, 2023 at 8:01 pm

      My OT rant for the benefit of my lawyer brethren here at the Juice:

       

      After over 30 years of lawyering, I represent a nice 75 year old woman whose physically frail and tiny 90-something mother had contracted an independent home caregiver a few months before she died. The caregiver (and I use the word loosely) was generally troublemaking, rooted through mail, and stopped working. Several months later and (after the death of the patient) the caregiver claimed that the immobilized old woman had bumped her leg with her transport chair a few days before the caregiver stopped coming over. The caregiver opened a comp claim through a lawyer I like a lot, and of course, there was no WC coverage.

      First lawyer pulls the ripcord, and the case is dismissed.

      The caregiver then goes out and finds an old shitbag shyster who has a whore of an ”expert”. Reopens the case. I’m pissed, but make it work – my client is cooperative with info, you name it. I’m invariably thoughtful on deposition dates and expansions/extensions when needed.

      Then we come to the stuff surrounding now.

      A deposition of my expert was set by Claimant’s lawyer unilaterally for a date which crashed into my own physical therapy for the end of January. I grumpily rearranged my PT, but that date fell apart due to Claimant’s lawyer having COVID the day before, which I have no problem with. He next tries – unilaterally – to set it for 4 pm on Valentine’s Day. I said “you’re kidding – I’m not doing a doc depo until 6-6:30 when I have dinner plans”.
      I hear nothing despite multiple emails about rescheduling and assume that he’s decided to save his money after I’d sent over the records his client’s lengthy history with pain management that had been omitted by his reopening filing.

      This past Monday afternoon (3/13) I get an email from a court reporter with a zoom link for my expert’s depo set for 4 pm on 3/14. I send a “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me” email to shitbag shyster; he responds by telling me that it was arranged by his staff with my staff. I point out in reply that I haven’t had a dedicated assistant since the start of COVID and I’m the only person who has ever done my scheduling and opened mail, and that no notice of deposition was efiled, mailed or present in the Worker’s Comp system.

      Got crickets.

      Yesterday, I got a “Motion to Consolidate” – he’d had her file another claim after I’d objected to (and gotten a favorable ruling denying) his request to join the closed estate to the original claim. The Workers Comp system doesn’t allow you to see a claim until it has been served and a party opts in – I assumed it was about a claim on the closed estate, and noticed that assface STILL hadn’t made any move to reopen the estate to make a claim. I emailed and asked him to copy me on the new 101 filing; crickets. I finally got him on the phone, and in a really gross conversation, he was defensive about the absence of notice on the deposition, acted like I was disagreeable to expect courtesy on calendar coordination, and then in the most stunning part of all, refused to send me the revised 101 because “he did what he was supposed to, and that I have to take that up with the people at Workers Comp” even though he filed it against a dead person at an address that has been sold. He even said that I’m clearly not reasonable to work with on his arbitrarily picked dates.

      I told him that I was going to have to try and forget that the conversation had ever happened, but that it was doubtful. Frankly, I’d be sitting in jail on an assault charge if he was in the same room with me at that point.

      Anyway, thanks for listening. I have got to get out of this fucking business just so I don’t have to beat someone into a coma for my own sanity.

      Reply
    73. 73.

      Roger Moore

      March 16, 2023 at 8:06 pm

      @pat: ​
       

      How on earth can you write an entire “book” about WOKE and not be able to define it??

      Jonah Goldberg wrote a whole book about “Liberal Fascism”, and he got tripped up when someone brought up Benito Mussolini. The literal founder of the Fascist party, and Doughy Pantload couldn’t figure out why someone might want to call him a fascist.

      Reply
    74. 74.

      Princess

      March 16, 2023 at 8:06 pm

      @Sure Lurkalot: This is actually a perfect definition of the White Supremacists and Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville those years ago and murdered Heather Heyer. Way to project, Bethany.

      Reply
    75. 75.

      Kay

      March 16, 2023 at 8:13 pm

      @UncleEbeneezer:

      It’s amazing to me that these supposed “Leftist populists” who are keening and moaning about the “working class” ignore state level Democrats and state law. Michigan Democrats repealed Right to Work! One would think “Leftists” would notice that. There’s like this whole world of actual labor news and actual populist economics that tv and internet Leftists are just not part of. It’s bizarre, really. They’re oddly irrelevant to real world activism and organizing and there’s no real interest on their part! They NEVER discuss any of these things. They’re terrible advocates.

      Reply
    76. 76.

      Roger Moore

      March 16, 2023 at 8:19 pm

      @Shalimar:

      Ok, how come when I follow a link to Twitter, most of the other tweets it thinks I will be interested in are porn?

      The links aren’t about what it thinks you will be interested in; they’re about what Twitter wants you to pay attention to.  They want to pull you in.  If they know a lot about you, they’ll be able to target better, but I guess if they don’t know much about you they fall back on sex.

      Reply
    77. 77.

      Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

      March 16, 2023 at 8:21 pm

      @Kay:

      Michigan Democrats repealed Right to Work! One would think “Leftists” would notice that. There’s like this whole world of actual labor news and actual populist economics that tv and internet Leftists are just not part of.

      It’s likely just “not good enough” to them or something. The people you’re talking about probably want to abolish capitalism itself. It’s easier to cosplay then do actual hard work in the real world

      Reply
    78. 78.

      frosty

      March 16, 2023 at 8:21 pm

      @Baud: The only Twitter I see is from AL and Adam. I like having it curated!

      Reply
    79. 79.

      Roger Moore

      March 16, 2023 at 8:27 pm

      @Sure Lurkalot:

      A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination.

      I don’t agree with those beliefs 100%, but they’re a lot closer to the truth than the belief our society doesn’t discriminate at all.

      Reply
    80. 80.

      HumboldtBlue

      March 16, 2023 at 8:32 pm

      Here is a writer for Slate giving Mandel all the rope she heeds to hang herself.

      I Asked “the Woman Who Couldn’t Define Woke” the Same Question Last Year
      It’s more revealing to listen to her in full.

      (It is absolutely fucking NOT more revealing listening to this silly twit)

      Reply
    81. 81.

      Mr. Bemused Senior

      March 16, 2023 at 8:49 pm

      @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:

      IANAL, and far be it from me to offer advice to act on, but the thought occurs to me that perhaps he’s trying to play you, get you to make a mistake out of anger. Of course, it may be he’s just a jerk.

      You have a sympathetic audience here. Good luck.

      Reply
    82. 82.

      The Kropenhagen Interpretation

      March 16, 2023 at 8:57 pm

      @Anoniminous: all change is for the worse to Right Wing Authoritarians.

      Well, I mean if you put them in charge of the change…

      Reply
    83. 83.

      Mai Naem mobile

      March 16, 2023 at 8:59 pm

      Completely OT but how come they haven’t had any currency bills with Janet Yellen’s signature yet? Have the proofs even been done? I am excited to stop seeing my bills with Munchkin’s signature and seeing Yellen’s instead.

      Reply
    84. 84.

      Scout211

      March 16, 2023 at 9:14 pm

      @Mai Naem mobile: It happened at the end of last year.

      Yellen became the latest Treasury secretary to sign US currency and the first woman Treasury secretary to have her signature on a US banknote. US Treasurer Lynn Malerba also signed the note, marking the first time the signatures of two women are featured on US currency and the first time a Native American’s signature has appeared on US currency.

      It’s been tradition for more than a century that both the US treasurer and the Treasury secretary sign currency to make the bills legal tender. And despite Yellen being in her role since January 2021, it’s taken until now because of the delayed appointment of a new treasurer. In June, President Joe Biden appointed Malerba to the post.
       

      Reply
    85. 85.

      The Kropenhagen Interpretation

      March 16, 2023 at 9:24 pm

      @Scout211: But will they be there to sign the first woman of color featured on the face of a bill?

      Reply
    86. 86.

      Sure Lurkalot

      March 16, 2023 at 9:35 pm

      @Roger Moore:

      “A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination.”

      I don’t agree with those beliefs 100%, but they’re a lot closer to the truth than the belief our society doesn’t discriminate at all.

      I take issue with “radical belief system suggesting” because there are accessible and plentiful historical records.  I take issue that anyone claims that “ALL disparity is a result of that discrimination” because that’s patent bullshit.

      She’s a lazy hack and it’s tiring that there’s seemingly limitless space for her ridiculous opinions and whining. I would think 6 kids would keep you busy.

      Reply
    87. 87.

      Frankensteinbeck

      March 16, 2023 at 9:35 pm

      @Kay:

      Michigan Democrats repealed Right to Work! One would think “Leftists” would notice that.

      That’s not eating the rich.  Their usual position is that the only legitimate solution is to destroy rich people, who are the evil enemy and source of all problems.  Anything less means you’re distracting from the real problem and probably on the side of the rich.

      Reply
    88. 88.

      Lapassionara

      March 16, 2023 at 10:03 pm

      @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: all I can say is you are doing the right thing for your client, and that is the best thing any lawyer can do.

      Reply
    89. 89.

      Balconesfault

      March 16, 2023 at 10:04 pm

      @Joseph Patrick Lurker: the “hot mic” take sounds like a flat out lie, doesn’t it?

      Reply
    90. 90.

      Barbara

      March 16, 2023 at 10:17 pm

      @HumboldtBlue: ​That interview was wild. Word salad and deflection and changing the subject from start to finish. Also lots of admitted assumptions because she hasn’t actually verified her complaints — like Scholastic books almost certainly say bad things about Churchill in the nature of information that is inappropriate for children to hear about. But she hasn’t actually read any herself.​

      Reply
    91. 91.

      Shalimar

      March 16, 2023 at 10:19 pm

      @Roger Moore: I get that, and get that I’m not there much, but I did go to the trouble 4-5 years ago of following more than 100 accounts and I add another one every few months.  Mostly liberal politics and reporters, with some rpg and board games, a few comic writers, and a few musicians.  It isn’t everthing I like, but should be plenty to at least offer me tweets I like more than random porn.

      Reply
    92. 92.

      C Stars

      March 16, 2023 at 10:24 pm

      @Baud: why does this post make me think about bellybuttons?

      Reply
    93. 93.

      NotMax

      March 16, 2023 at 10:26 pm

      @C Stars

      Member of the Navel Reserve?
      :)

      Reply
    94. 94.

      eclare

      March 16, 2023 at 10:29 pm

      Watching EEAAO.  So far loving it.

      Reply
    95. 95.

      persistentillusion

      March 16, 2023 at 10:33 pm

      @HumboldtBlue: How does she remember to breathe, being that stupid?

      Reply
    96. 96.

      Old School

      March 16, 2023 at 10:36 pm

      @eclare: Then you should enjoy the rest.  It seems like the type of film where you know pretty early whether it’ll be for you or not.

      Reply
    97. 97.

      Geminid

      March 16, 2023 at 10:40 pm

      @Frankensteinbeck: There is a resentful, accelerationist strain within what some people call the “Dirtbag Left.” They see a successful liberal Democratic party as blocking their own path to power. That brings the “horseshoe” dynamic into play; their posture towards the illiberal Rght is, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

      These guys- and they seem to be mostly guys- are somewhat vague about the damage the illiberal Right would do if it gained power.. I guess they figure that the worse matters get, the more quickly “the Masses” will sweep them into power.

      Reply
    98. 98.

      Barbara

      March 16, 2023 at 10:44 pm

      @Old School: ​Most critics seem to like it but a few I trust really didn’t, although they praised individual performances.

      Reply
    99. 99.

      eversor

      March 16, 2023 at 10:45 pm

      @Frankensteinbeck:

      That’s quasi true though.  Case in point I’m in NOVA and while most people here are upper middle class or small rich they are vastly more vicious than the rich on economic issues.  Sure they are social liberals.  But the moment you propose something that hits them and works for the basic (sub 250k per person) middle class or the working class let alone might let those working class kids have a shot at a future vs their kids they will turner harder right than David Duke and the Koch brothers.  They just will not allow it.   Ever.  This VA’s blue base.  It’s all these assholes.  Who are all former Republican types but don’t like the Jesus Brigade now.  But they will take that over giving up their postion.  They earned it!  They went to college.  A good college not a joke one where you should have to flip burgers.

      For any sort of working economic solution the rich do have to be eaten, so does the upper middle class.

      We have hit the point that everyone making six figures or higher (and I’m in this range) gets the ox gored and gored hard and their kids are stripped of every advantage and are clobbered by taxes or we get a French Revolution by the Religious Right and they control life.   Since we will not accept the end of meritocracy bring on the right wing death squads.  People have their heads in the sand over this.   But the civil war has started, it’s just slow rolling.

      Reply
    100. 100.

      Barbara

      March 16, 2023 at 10:46 pm

      @Geminid: ​Or maybe they don’t feel vulnerable because the right is unlikely to take away their rights.

      Reply
    101. 101.

      Mr. Bemused Senior

      March 16, 2023 at 10:47 pm

      @Geminid:  “… sweep them into power.”  As if.  And what would they do then?  I seem to recall a cartoon of Obama just inaugurated, scribbling a note to himself, “we are so f***ed!”

      Reply
    102. 102.

      Barbara

      March 16, 2023 at 10:47 pm

      @eversor: ​Don’t any of these people have college age kids?

      Reply
    103. 103.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 10:54 pm

      @Sure Lurkalot: ​
       

      A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the end point, enforced by an angry mob.

      GAME SHOW BUZZER — Oh I’m so sorry, that’s not correct.

      Reply
    104. 104.

      MisterForkbeard

      March 16, 2023 at 10:56 pm

      @Roger Moore: You can make it true by changing two words:

      An evident belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that much disparity is a result of that discrimination

      Reply
    105. 105.

      different-church-lady

      March 16, 2023 at 10:56 pm

      @Mai Naem mobile: ​
        Because the damn millennials killed physical money with their creepy little phones is why.

      Reply
    106. 106.

      James E Powell

      March 16, 2023 at 10:57 pm

      @Geminid:

      They see a successful liberal Democratic party as blocking their own path to power.

      The notion that the True Left® has any path to power in United States is laughable. In fact, it doesn’t even rise to the level of laughable.

      Reply
    107. 107.

      Captain C

      March 16, 2023 at 11:11 pm

      @Kay: I think in at least some cases they’re more interested in cosplaying that they’re the heroes rather than doing the work and in learning what and who is actually out there.

      Reply
    108. 108.

      JaySinWA

      March 16, 2023 at 11:25 pm

      Most of the definitions of Woke that I have seen are about situational awareness. The “talk” and general understanding of how the world works. Anti-woke seems to be an ignorance is bliss arguement.

      Reply
    109. 109.

      Poe Larity

      March 16, 2023 at 11:30 pm

      Oh, sometimes a techie knocks it out of the ballpark:

      https://svbhallofshame.wordpress.com

      Reply
    110. 110.

      RaflW

      March 17, 2023 at 12:14 am

      It’s too bad mom of a newborn Bethany Mendacious couldn’t take maternity leave. What a cruel publishing company to just force her to do a video interview.

      Reply
    111. 111.

      Mai Naem mobile

      March 17, 2023 at 12:29 am

      @Scout211: that is fucking awesome. I had no idea the treasurer was a Native American. I can’t wait to see the RWingers burning their woke dollar bills.

      Reply
    112. 112.

      Kay

      March 17, 2023 at 12:35 am

      Here’s a longer interview with Mandel where she isn’t rattled and answers all the questions. It’s just as bad as when she can;t answer them. 

      Example: the book she wrote is called “Stolen Youth” and it’s about how woke liberals enlist children in culture wars, using books. But when she’s presented with the fact that there are whole series of childrens books that glorify conservative leaders (Rush Limbaugh), trash public schools, rewrite history to remove the icky parts, and on and on and asked whether she objects to THIS, we find she does not. She approves of GOP culture warring. It’s just liberals and liberalism she opposes.

      Like all of the warriors against woke, it’s a mess. There’s no coherent or consistent theory at all. Woke is whatever they disagree with.

      Reply
    113. 113.

      Kay

      March 17, 2023 at 12:42 am

      She complains that there is no childrens book about Winston Churchill. This is proof of The Woke. Except she’s wrong, there is a childrens book about Winston Churchill. Presented with this, she invents an entire set of objections to the book about Winston Churchill – she hasn’t read the book, didn’t even know it existed until she was told, but that doesn’t stop her from describing an imaginary “woke” book:

      I don’t know what they would swipe him about. But I just don’t trust that Scholastic would be the most generous with a figure like Churchill. Like, are they gonna call him a drunk? They’re just gonna be sort of nasty and sow the seeds, like, “This person was OK, except he was an alcoholic and used to make his secretary talk to him while he was in the bathtub” and have a cartoon view of who he was instead of this towering hero of freedom in world history.

      Again- the Scholastic childrens book on Churchill exists so she doesn’t have to “trust” anything. She could read it. But she has to pretend it doesn’t exist and if it exists (it does) she has to invent what’s in it in order to make her OWN book make sense- because, remember, HER book says liberals are brainwashing children thru books.

      Reply
    114. 114.

      HumboldtBlue

      March 17, 2023 at 1:59 am

      It’s very rare to see this blog come to a standstill. From my experience, it’s active pretty much 24 hours a day. I mean, it’s not even midnight PST and youse are already in bed.

      It’s March Madness, so this is fun.

      Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman to earn the Nobel Prize in literature is featured on the newest Forever stamp from the United States Postal Service.

      Reply
    115. 115.

      Chris Johnson

      March 17, 2023 at 8:40 am

      @Geminid: No, there’s a number of women as well. They’re not really Left because imperialist doesn’t count as left: they’re just tankies. They’re working for Putin, sometimes quite literally as in Caleb Maupin the spanky tankie.

      Basically the litmus test is Ukraine. If they’re on the side of Putin and running his talking points, they’re dirtbag left meaning not really Left, just Russia in a mask.

      Reply
    116. 116.

      Paul in KY

      March 17, 2023 at 10:59 am

      @Kay: She’s just a right wing shill. A marketer of their worldview.

      Reply

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