The jokes, they write themselves:
The speaker is Fred Ryan, publisher of the Washington Post, in a note to staff about stepping down from that job and taking a new one. Presented without comment. pic.twitter.com/YO5FT7v2Wk
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) June 13, 2023
Here is his full memo:
Dear Washington Post Colleagues,
Nine years ago, I was honored to be selected by Jeff Bezos to be Publisher and CEO of The Washington Post. Working with Jeff and the exceptional team at The Post has been an incredible experience and enormously gratifying.
Together, we have accomplished one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern media history. We have evolved from a primarily local print newspaper to become a global digital publication. We’ve added significantly to the tremendous team of journalists, engineers and business experts and have taken The Post through multiple years of profitability. We’ve launched an innovative new technology platform that is powering hundreds of other news sites around the world.
During this time, we have won multiple awards for exceptional journalism, including 13 Pulitzer Prizes, and we’ve twice been named “The World’s Most Innovative Media Company” by Fast Company.
As I have shared in conversations with many of you, I have a deep and growing concern about the decline in civility and respectful dialogue in our political process, on social media platforms and more broadly across our society. Many of us can recall an era when people could disagree without being disagreeable. Political leaders on opposite sides of the aisle could find common ground for the good of the country. Today, the decline in civility has become a toxic and corrosive force that threatens our social interactions and weakens the underpinnings of our democracy. I feel a strong sense of urgency about this issue.
As a result, I have decided to leave my position at The Post to lead the nonpartisan Center on Public Civility that is being launched by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. Jeff is personally providing support for the planning and design phase of this new initiative and supports my decision to make this move.
In order to provide advice and counsel during this transition, I have agreed to remain as Publisher of The Washington Post until August 1. Jeff will announce a new interim CEO later today. It is an exceptional individual that I hold in the highest regard.
In the weeks and months ahead, I look forward to spending time with all of my friends and colleagues across The Post to convey my deep appreciation for your many impressive contributions to our success. I am committed to providing my full support as the interim CEO charts the course of this transition and the bright future ahead for The Post.
With my deepest appreciation to each of you,
Fred
Yes. A former Reagan appointee is upset about the tone and the toxicity and the lack of civility, so he is moving on to the… Reagan Foundation to do who knows fucking what. Let’s put aside the inherent lack of incivility of all the things that Reagan and his administration did, and how you can basically trace a DIRECT fucking line from every problem we have today in this country back to something that started or was implemented during the Reagan years. I don’t need to go over them all, they have been discussed by smarter people over and over and over again. But in the off chance there are any youngs out there in the reading audience, click those links and learn where a lot of this shit started.
Where was I? Ahem. The thing you need to understand about respectability politics is this- it is ALWAYS practiced by the HAVES. It is always used to defuse righteous anger. It is always used to deflect from the problem at hand. It is always practiced by those who benefit from the status quo. It is always a tool of oppression. And it is always, always, always, swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the fucking dimwits in our failed media experiment.
It was a running joke for the last few decades of blogging that you could murder someone so long as you didn’t swear while doing it. The attempts by the networks and “respectable news” to shut out or ignore bloggers because they were pottymouthed were legendary. Hell, our own lexicon has entries on Blogger Ethics Panels and High Broderism and America’s Concern Troll, to name a few of the iterations. How many of you remember the lifetime network ban of Marci Wheeler from MSNBC for saying “blowjob:”
A more recent example is the Tennessee Three:
Last Thursday was a shameful day in the Volunteer State. Just days after six people — three of them only nine years old — were murdered in an elementary school, three Democratic lawmakers joined a group of protesters demanding their legislature act. Rather than listen and engage, the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted according to party lines to expel two of their colleagues from the chamber. It is not lost on me that, of the three legislators whose expulsion was brought to a vote, the two young Black men were expelled, while the white woman survived the vote.
These men, state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, represented majority Black districts in Nashville and Memphis, respectively. If made permanent, the expulsion would have left over 139,000 constituents without their duly democratically elected representation, leaving them disenfranchised and without a voice in their state’s legislative process. Over half of these constituents are Black.
It’s why they don’t like protests. They deflect the murder of civilians by police by blathering on about riots and property destruction. This has always been the case, will always be the case, and when someone comes at you with respectability politics or tells you to be civil, you need to recognize what they are doing- they are telling you to sheathe your righteous anger, to recognize who you are and that you are one of the ignorable little people, and they are trying to maintain the status quo, which ALWAYS fucking benefits them.
Tell them to go fuck themselves and yell louder.
The good news about all of this is that this is, to a large extent, a byproduct of a foregone era when Republicans and Democrats could, to a degree, work together to achieve things. That era is for the most part over, because it is increasingly clear that one of the two major political parties is clinically fucking insane and run by nihilistic nutters. But still, older members of the media and the elsewhere still pine for the days of yore, and we still get this nonsense bubbling up from time to time about decency and civility. Fortunately, however, the new generations of Democrats are young enough that Republicans have been insane, destructive lunatics their entire lives. People being elected today were in kindergarten when Michelle Malkin was stalking Graeme Frost examining his countertops or screaming about Rachel Ray’s scarf being a terrorist hijab.
But it still exists. So watch out for it.
Fucking hell I need an editor.
Baud
Looking forward to Trump’s speech on civility at the Reagan Institute.
cope
Without lack of civility, how would the fainting couch industry survive
ETA: Nice rant.
smith
And the irony is that the terrifying Woke Mob that our Betters are so incensed about is basically insisting that those Betters show some respect and civility towards people they consider insignificant.
Kay
@smith:
They’re all just such ninnies. The overreaction to “the woke mob” is embarrassing. It’s not rational to be so afraid of 22 year old social workers. It shows how CODDLED these people are that they considered “wokeism” to be some existential threat.
Anyway
Preach!
eversor
Since when can’t you say blow job on cable TV?
As for the “terrorist scarf” uh our “the troops” wore those as well while in Iraq and Afghanistan on the ME in general. I still have a few!
Betty Cracker
Bravo!
karen marie
There have to be easier ways for “Jeff” to get out of a contract.
But it’s a joke right? Please tell me this isn’t something actual adults think is a productive use of time and money.
WaterGirl
Righteous rant, Cole!
Ksmiami
Whew Cole, if you’d said fuck just a few more times, I would have thought Rude Pundit had kidnapped the blog father … but yeah, Respectability and silencing the oppressed is always practiced by those on top.
Alison Rose
To quote John Oliver: “To use America’s official slogan: Ronald Reagan made it worse!”
I fucking loathe the “civility” discussion and the whole “why can’t we just agree to disagree and be buddies anyway” conversations, as though we’re talking about plastic bag bans, or maximum building heights, or the hours of use for public parks. We’re talking about human rights, about people being treated equally and with respect, about people being allowed to pursue life, liberty, and happiness like we’re all ostensibly supposed to be able to do. I am not going to be “civil” to someone who thinks trans people deserve to be locked up or killed. And anyone who CAN be civil with those people is no better than they are.
smith
@eversor: I’d guess since Marci Wheeler said it.
It’s amazing to me that apparently, according to official history anyway, the MSM was able to cover Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes in volume for years without once ever saying “blow job.”
FastEdD
The flogging will continue until morale improves. But you can’t use cuss words while you are being flogged. That would not be civil discourse!
Kay
Here’s their big, stupid insufferable “Letter” where they announce the 19 year old who make up the Oberlin student council are an existential threat:
Ninnies. And not just Right wing ninnies. Some of them claim to be liberals and Leftists. Dear God, DO NOT be mean to them on the internet or they will fucking lose their minds.
They never actually ARGUE anything either. They argue that they aren’t allowed to argue. They never get around to what it is that people supposedly won’t let them say. It is about CONTROL. They are the norm setters, by right. No one else may usurp that role.
cain
The irony is that they don’t want that – they want to comment about incivility – but incivility also brings eyeballs and gets them to watch. It’s why they love Trump so much, the man is incivil daily but they get to report on that and people show up to hear about the civility.
The media loves this new “Jerry Springer” version of the news. Infotainment. It’s how the 24 hour news business model runs. Keep you engaged.
John’s point from a party perspective largely holds true – it’s why they are ‘law and order’ – but only when it comes to trying to enforce civility rules when they are criming.
Ramalama
Mad props (or “angry theatrical devices”) to that Marcy Wheeler video. She does list her being a pottymouth in her Twitter profile. But I’d forgotten exactly why she did that.
To the fainting couches and settees!
Old School
Well, now I feel old.
gvg
I don’t care that someone who could write that is leaving. What I want to know is who Bezos will hire to replace him. That worries me.
PS the decline in civility seems to me to originate on the right, with republicans who talk about killing others and pass laws that it is OK to do so such as running down protestors with cars or stand their ground where they really have no right to etc. If he had written those words but not gone to a republican job, it would be a lot more credible. As it is, he is a hypocrite.
smith
@Kay: It’s also about entitlement. It’s just so inconvenient to have to watch their tongues when they are around POC, and to keep their hands to themselves when they are around young women.
Bill Arnold
You do not.
This is your best rant in the last 20 years. IMO.
Or, if there is an audience, and especially if there is a mass audience, tell them some variation on this:
SiubhanDuinne
Outstanding rant, John. The only place I see where an editor’s gentle touch might be required is in this sentence:
I believe you want either “lack of civility” or simply “inherent incivility.”
Had entirely forgotten about Rachel Ray’s terrorist hijab. What the hell ever happened to Malkin? Haven’t thought about her in years
Gin & Tonic
You don’t need an editor, it’s just right the way it is.
lollipopguild
Thank you for the Rant John. NO you do not need an editor.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Ahhh, that’s the good stuff.
You know you’re dealing with an authoritarian asshole when they break out the whole “being able to disagree, without being disagreeable” schtick. Sure, I’m going to support politicians that will make your life more difficult, but we can still be friends, right?
Doug R
For fuck’s sake, it’s live TV. These people are willing to toss “well regulated militia” from their precious SECOND amendment BUT will lay down and let the FCC fine them for saying bad words that accurately describe actual acts in the news.
cmorenc
Realize that the disdain and contempt for “respectability politics” is the one thing both progressive and MAGA folks can agree on. It can produce and energize both constructive and malignant forces in American society and politics. It can be put to both positive (the 3 expelled Tenn legislators) or malignantly negative purposes (Trump, Newt Gingrich).
Your post assumes this energy will be put to constructive purposes, but not necessarily so. It’s fuel for both progressive reformers and reactionary demagogues – it’s a volatile dynamic (like dynamite) that is agnostic toward what ideology or vision it’s being used for.
Baud
Reprinting my comment from a couple of days ago when news of this first broke.
Matt McIrvin
@cmorenc: MAGA folks are all for pouting about other people being incivil.
Arclite
Not every post can be this righteous, but that was amazing.
Kay
@smith:
The whining I hear because people aren’t allowed to bother women while they are at work anymore. Jesus. They can still bother women in their free time without any real accountability other tham women stayng away from them! We’re just asking them to behave decently WHILE AT WORK and they can’t even do that.
Jeffro
Hmmm…looks like Elon Musk is calling for a “modern-day Sulla” (ie, the Roman general who overthrew the Republic by force)…no worries, nothing to see here folks.
tam1MI
Michelle Malkin. There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long while.
Good.
Kelly
The “politically incorrect” whining that went on for decades before “woke” came into fashion was the same thing. Was there anything before “politically incorrect” or was it just peachy to be a bigoted asshole back then?
Falling Diphthong
I am trying to figure out what this job would actually be, and have settled on “spy who will be squirrel-suiting into nuclear plants, who tells you his job is ‘promoting civility’ and then your eyes glaze over and you don’t ask awkward questions.”
Barney
So I looked to see if the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation or its head had seriously criticised Trump, since it’s blindingly obvious that it’s his bigotry that has given the Republicans permission to be so fucking uncivil (racism, misogyny, xenophobia, LGBT hatred, hatred of teachers, accusing Fauci of ignoring deaths so that it made Trump look bad …).
‘What do we stand for?’: Reagan Library director reflects on Trump, the state of the GOP (yahoo.com)
Nope, he’s an enabler of the uncivility. Wait, he’s got more to say:
OK, he’s not just enabling Trump; he’s actively leading the uncivility by bullshitting and attacking the “Democrat” Party with lies. If that’s who Fred Ryan is going to work for, he’s a right wing fellow traveller, and the Post is well rid of him.
Ruckus
Civility is more important than freedom, responsibility, reality, so say the monied, the haves, the privileged, the racists, the assholes.
Those people will not be worse off if freedom, responsibility and reality actually happened, they’d still have their positions, money, lives. They more likely would have more, because the country would be a better place to live for all. We should not have to demand, fight for equality in an over 200 yr old country that is based upon the idea that all are created equal. We should not have to fight for taxation that is based upon everyone paying their fair share. We should not have a publication that every year prints a list of the 400 wealthiest and everyone on that is a billionaire that doesn’t pay a fair share of taxes. We should not have, in this day and age a health care system that only gives reasonable healthcare to the monied. We should not have thousands of people that sleep in tents in a democracy because they can not get help more than that tent because of the color of their skin. Millions of citizens have and do serve in the military during wars to protect the wealthy and they still demand to be wealthier than they can ever spend and that others are denied life, liberty and happiness. I’ve spent almost 3/4 of a century on this rock, served in the military during war, and most of that 3/4 of a century creating tools and goods that made others money, paid taxes, and over that time this country has hardly lived up to the concept that started it. If we do better, it will be better for those who have paid a far greater price for just being alive and for often not living in any way realistic. And if I’m not mistaken that is the premise of this country, it’s in the oath I took when I enlisted, it’s in the pledge I used to say in school. My life as a white man has not been the greatest, but it has been reasonable, and that can not be said for far too many of our citizens, who are humans, who are supposed to have the same rights and privileges, even as we know they do not.
Matt McIrvin
@Kelly: I recall “All in the Family” having a lot of jokes where Archie Bunker complains that you can’t use racial slurs any more and what Those People want to be called changes every week. But the term for “politically correct” was probably just “commies”/”hippies”/slurs I won’t repeat at that point.
And in the early Reagan Administration before “PC” became a common term, they just used “liberal” as an insult, pretty effectively.
MattF
@Jeffro: Followed by the installation of an emperor. One who will fiddle while Rome burns.
eclare
Preach!
Roger Moore
@Kay:
What they’re really afraid of is accountability. They’ve gotten their privileged positions, and now they’re terrified they might lose their privilege because the little people now have the right to object to what they say.
Super Dave
Just adding my vote for “fucking hell, you DO NOT need an editor.”
John, your best rant ever!
I spent yesterday driving from Knoxville TN to St. Louis MO, listening to MSNBC trying to (over)cover TFG’s arraignment. By the end of the drive I was ready to go on a shooting spree, but it was too hard to figure out where to start. Your rant gave me some peace this morning. Thank you!
Please ignore the hyperbole about the spree, I’m not a violent person.
Baud
@Barney:
Thanks for doing the research. About what I expected. Incivility means John Cole, not Donald Trump.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
Dear Fred,
As a High Mucky Muck at the Reagan Institute for Civility, you may be able to locate some Republicans who could be more civil. (Your experience heading a newspaper may help; maybe you even know some Rs who could be more C. It could happen! And imagine, there you were — a life-long Republican running the Post! Our Liberal Media … score one for Professional Journalism™!)
If you do, I hope you’ll spend some time talking with them.
Let us know if you make it back.
I’m sure a lot of us Democrats will do the same (if we can find some Democrats who are being uncivil); we’re good about norms – maybe too good for our own good, IYKWIMAITYD.
Looking forward to being able to compare our experiences, if you make it back as I said before.
Much love,
Dog, etc.
Baud
Sorry to go OT, but this is amazing (via reddit)
smith
It’s my belief that it was Me Too that pushed our “public intellectuals” who like to pass as liberal into the anti-woke camp. Maybe I’m misremembering, but I think the outrage over “political correctness” was largely a conservative thing that didn’t much bother them. But when Me Too took down some prominent members of their tribe, it became a crisis of world-shaking proportions.
Kay
@cmorenc:
This is true, IMO and a great point. I just don’t think inciting a panic about “wokeness” helped matters at all.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: apartheid emerald prince says what
pat
I sometimes read the “opinion” pieces at WaPo by their four (!) right-wing commenters and skip the article to go to the responses.
Inevitably, someone writes “WaPo, please get rid of this guy..”
eta: And gets lots of “likes.”
Alison Rose
@Baud: BIDEN’S WAR ON COAL
Roger Moore
@Alison Rose:
The fundamental problem is that the media cares far more about tone than content. As long as you speak calmly and wear the right kind of clothes, they don’t care what policies you’re proposing. If you get angry and use intemperate language because they other guy is advocating for genocide, you’re the one who’s being uncivil.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: That’s mostly because natural gas has eclipsed coal as our overwhelmingly dominant fossil-fuel electricity source, but it’s something.
oklahomo
This makes me feel nostalgic for the days of the Broderella comic strips at the Poormans.
Poorman Archive
Kay
@smith:
I agree. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many of them are 50 year old (and older) men.
BLM and covid also freaked them out too- because they’re ninnies and afraid of everything.
HumboldtBlue
BLOGGER ETHICS PANEL!!!!!!!
Karen S.
The Center on Public Civility… What on earth does that mean? Are they going to run seminars on how to be more civil? It just sounds like a nice sinecure for a select few who’ll write op-eds for the WaPo and get on TV to tut-tut about how rude we are.
My dad told me an anecdote from his childhood in New Madrid, MO, back during the Depression. He was running an errand for his mother and came upon a horrific scene. Two white men were beating a Black man. One of the white men, he remembered, wore a pair of brass knuckles. When he got home, he told his mother about the incident and asked her why they were beating that man. His mother told him to be quiet and never speak of the incident again. I guess it was her way of protecting her small Black son. The so-called “good old days,” when there was supposedly more civility and decorum, certainly weren’t good for some.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Purposeful break
You mean “the fucking dimwit haves in our failed media experiment.
Frankly, I’ll take honesty over civility in our political discourse any day.
am
Man, you don’t need an editor, this was one of the best things I’ve ever read, and I do _not say that lightly_.
Kelly
@Matt McIrvin: “All in the Family” I missed a lot popular culture because Mom refused to allow a TV at our house while we were growing up. I do remember people complaining about the evolving racial and ethnic naming conventions.
Matt McIrvin
(When I was a kid, liquid petroleum was still a major contributor to the US power grid. It’s not any more, unless you live in Hawaii.)
Kay
@smith:
Took down some, you know, the actual criminals, but they exaggerate even that. Most of them just launched new careers as professional anti woke assholes.
smith
@Kay: Yes, but they had to endure so much embarrassment before finding a new, more comfortable niche.
Bill Arnold
@Jeffro:
Here’s the context. Musk is replying to some drivel from David Sacks about the alleged, but somehow never actually produced (at least not yet, in one sense (deep fake) of “produced”), Biden audio “bribe recording”. (Not looking forward to operatives using deep fakes to attempt to influence the USA 2024 elections. Absolute ruthlessness is in order if they (Rs, non-USA actors) go there.)
Also, the Musk tweet advocating for sedition. Maybe not in a legal sense, but it is literally advocating for the destruction of the United States of America. He is an enemy.
“Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince”.
Ruckus
@Kay:
They’re all just such ninnies. The overreaction to “the woke mob” is embarrassing. It’s not rational to be so afraid of 22 year old social workers. It shows how CODDLED these people are that they considered “wokeism” to be some existential threat.
To them it is an existential threat. This group of humans are made up of people who either have far more than they ever need or actually not much more than those that sleep in tents on the street. And this “wokeism” bullshit is of course made up to say nothing and mean racism, power and wealth. Those using this bullshit have money and whiteness and are supported by many who have far less money but are on board because of course they get to blame the concept of skin color on their lack of much to show for their lives. It’s not that they’ll be better off with “wokeism,” it’s that others will be worse off.
prostratedragon
“Why Can’t We Be Friends?”
Redshift
It’s also the perpetual willful blindness to which is cause and which is effect:
“What can’t they just compromise on tire rims and meatballs, or pasta and anthrax? They just don’t try any more…”
Matt McIrvin
@pat:
oh noes CENSORSHIP!
(remember Hruska’s dictum: Mediocrities need representation too!)
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
Case in point: the entire career of George Will.
Kay
@Kelly:
But complaining about it shows the power of the naming convention. It DOES matter how one refers to people, or they wouldn’t be insisting on using the older language they are comfortable with. At least the people insisting on new conventions admit that the conventions matter, that language matters. These dolts are like “This is the name I used when I was in college so that’s the name and it’s silly to object”.
smith
@Redshift: It’s also a great example of bothsidesing. Dems have observed previously-established norms for too long in the face of the GQP totally abandoning them. We’ve been overdue for some tit-for-tat, and I’m glad younger people have started providing it.
Gordon Schumway
I’m dropping off the grid before they pump the lead
I leave you with four words: I’m glad Reagan dead
laura
So Fred Ryan is harrumphing off to join one of the many circle of jerks in one of many cushy well paid circle jerk centers to wring out the sad and flaccid op eds reflecting on those more civil times of yore that litter my local what used to be a newspaper and I’m supposed to give a tinker’s damn? Hard pass white man.
Quick reminder that Ronald Reagan DESTROYED the robust California public education system starting with the dismantling of the Master Plan for Higher Education and laid the groundwork for Prop 13 that nuked primary public schools. Dont get me started on his fuckery with state hospitals- I will throw a fucking chair stg!
Marcy Wheeler is that cool hand on a fevered brow and if you’re not following her blog or twitter feed you should get on that right away.
tobie
I never had much truck with the civility crowd but lost whatever patience I had for it when Ruth Marcus devoted an entire column in the Post to excoriating a 16-year-old in Kansas for being rude to then Governor Sam Brownback. You know what’s uncivil? Republican policies.
On NPR this weekend they had a spot on anti abortion centers called “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” that get carte blanche to counsel what they will because they’re not medical clinics but they’re still performing transvaginal probes and they’re not properly sterilizing equipment, thus exposing women to the human Pamplona virus. That’s “uncivil.” Reagan would approve this kind of shit.
BeautifulPlumage
This is so, so true Cole, thanks for the post and perspective. The only thing progressives got from the Reagan years were protest songs. The first that come to mind are “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” & “Bedtime For Bonzo”
Van Buren
A long time ago, some guy that people are talking about more and more said this:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
As you say, calls for civility are calls to submit to status quo.
catclub
Newt Fucking Gingrich killed civility. Not hippies. When the civility cops burn him at the stake… that will be a start.
catclub
@Van Buren: also this guy:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household”
Kelly
@Kay: Out here in lily white rural Oregon the evolving naming conventions for African-Americans didn’t matter much. I knew exactly one black person until I went to college in Eugene. The worst bigotry was saved for Native people. First for fighting to assert their treaty rights and more recently much bitterness at removing the female native S* word from geographic place names. Anti-hispanic bigotry was a bit more selective. “He’s one of the good ones”
catclub
@tobie:
I see little tiny bulls rampaging through your veins and arteries.
Gravenstone
It’d be great if these morons would recognize that the right ignores people who won’t reinforce their own prejudices, while the left tends to push back against the endless lies intended to support the status quo. Not exactly (or remotely) the “both sides” bullshit narrative they wish promote.
Matt McIrvin
@Kelly:
Oh hell yes.
For that matter the extent to which the mechanisms of segregation were replicated out West for them is under-discussed.
S Cerevisiae
Sadly, No! had one of the best headlines for a post about the Rachel Ray hijab kerfuffel: Axis of Evoo.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: I stopped reading George Will a long time ago, but before I did, the way the guy would flip between tut-tutting about how liberals were coarse and vulgar barbarians, or how they were censorious puritans out to ruin our fun, in alternate columns really got on my nerves. Please, George, just admit you want all humanity to act just like George Will and be done with it. Not wearing the little bow tie.
Llelldorin
@Kay: I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that folks my age — 50s-ish gen-Xers — are having a disproportionately hard time being mocked by attractive young college students because it’s forcing us to realize that we are not, in fact, currently attractive young college students.
Not everyone my age, naturally — some of us have mirrors — but some.
tobie
@catclub: oy veh. Papilloma virus, though I do like the idea of rage as a running of the bulls in Spain.
HeleninEire
Righteous Rant
James E Powell
@Kay:
And if “woke” means anything, it is civility. Being polite, respectful, welcoming.
JaySinWA
Ah the “can’t say blowjob” ban.
Yesterday I watched part of the coverage of the protests on our local OTA FOX affiliate mainlining the FOX News coverage. I was shocked, shocked I tell you that one of the banners getting center screen coverage had “Fuck Biden” as the text, here at the noon hour PST. The seven words you can never say on television era is dead for at least some forms of expression.
I wonder if someone will make an FCC complaint. Won’t somebody think of the children? (I think the restraints on daytime TV are pretty insipid, so I won’t, but somebody out there has to be offended by the word and rushing to cover their real or imagined kids eyes.)
Matt McIrvin
@Llelldorin: I remember reading one of the early peddlers of a cyclical generational theory of politics claiming that Gen X would never have a midlife crisis basically because we were born pre-crankified. Hasn’t prevented it from happening one bit.
Llelldorin
@Matt McIrvin: No—strangely enough we get old and fat just like everyone else.
Brachiator
Great rant, John Cole.
And great comments on the topic.
Betty Cracker
@cmorenc: Excellent point.
EarthWindFire
@Baud: I’m looking forward to Fred Ryan failing upward to head of the Center for White Collar Crime Prevention, headquartered at Mar-A-Lago.
oatler
@Matt McIrvin:
Goes against my theory that Gen X came factory-set for the Reagan era, hence the gushing nostalgia for John Hughes and Happy Meal toys.
piratedan
Dear Fred,
This civility thingy would take care of itself if you simply reported the news instead of seeking to frame it in whatever narrative your desk editor is pushing that day.
Yours Truly,
Your Subscribers….
Adrian Lesher
“In 1995, Ryan became the chairman of the board of trustees for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, serving with fellow board members including First Lady Nancy Reagan and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”
James E Powell
@prostratedragon:
Right, we’re all just Everyday People.
Baud
@EarthWindFire:
Haha. Perfect.
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: We must honor the classics.
sukabi
John, no editor needed. Perfect as written.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think there are some people who are just resistant to change, and they don’t like the implication they’re doing something wrong by using the terminology they’re familiar and comfortable with, which is lazy and dismissive. I have more sympathy for the case where terminology keeps changing.
Consider the case of people with physical disabilities. In my life, we’ve had a number of different terms that people have tried to push: handicapped, disabled, differently abled, people with disabilities, and probably a few more I can’t remember. That can be legitimately confusing, especially when advocates for the group can’t always seem to make up their minds about what the best terminology is. You can feel as if no matter what you say, you’re going to be criticized because somebody prefers a different way of saying it.
prostratedragon
@catclub: Newt finished it. I was recently reminded what a harbinger James Watt was.
Citizen Alan
@Alison Rose:
Talk of civility enrages me because of how one sided it is. When people like this jackass talk about “civility,” they mean the idea that no one should ever say or do anything that upsets or offends or angers conservatives. That is civility, a public virtue that should be promoted.
The idea that conservatives should refrain from saying or doing things that upset or offend or anger anyone else? That is political correctness, a grave sin which must be condemned at all times.
Fucking hypocrites.
JaySinWA
@cmorenc: I have similar thoughts.
Given the insane spittle flecked rage of Gym Jordan types, calm rebuttal might be more productive (not with Jordan but with others listening) although it seems like unilateral disarmament.
Continuous rage is counter productive and damaging but rage needs to be raised when appropriate.
ColoradoGuy
The party of Spiro Fucking Agnew has NO right to lecture anyone, ever, about civility. I still remember the things he said after the mass murder at Kent State.
And California Governor Reagan rolling tanks into Berkeley (over People’s Park, a tiny strip of waste ground). My sister still has photos of National Guard tanks parked under her dorm.
The GOP was vile when Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn were holding the HUAC hearings. They have only gotten worse in the decades that followed.
different-church-lady
@Old School: They’ve gone soft: now they’re scared of their condiments.
Bill Arnold
@prostratedragon:
James Watt was the first to cause my father to start doubting the Republican Party. New Gingrich delivered the conversion (to Democrats) blow with his government shutdown. (Literally, he and my mom were kicked out of Death Valley because the park closed.)
Almost Retired
Righteous rant!!! I’m sick of the concept of civility being used as a bludgeon against the less powerful. The fucking California Bar Association is shoving civility down its members throats. I represent workers in wage theft, discrimination and harassment lawsuits. And I’m supposed to be civil to THESE GUYS, who have been my opposing counsel many times:
https://davidlat.substack.com/p/the-barber-ranen-blowup-the-worst
Yeah. Fuck that.
Kay
@Llelldorin:
It DOES feel like that to me with the middle aged anti woke “Leftists” – Matt Taibii, Greenwald, Freddie deBoer and the stand up comics- not “attractive” so much as no longer edgy and cool. They seem stuck in some personal defining moment – the Bush Years – so 20 years ago now.
If people in their twenties don’t find people in their fifties funny that is just not a crisis. Sorry. They just don’t think you’re funny. I know my 20 year old won’t find Louis CK masturbation jokes screamingly funny and it isn’t “wokeism” – that kind of humor is just tired. It’s like demanding a Gen X-er laugh at Milton Berle.
Juliet
John this is why I have been reading your blog since well before countertop inspections were all the rage. Thank you for continuing to say the things I feel but can’t express nearly so eloquently.
Paul in KY
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: It’s hard to make a man understand etc. etc. etc.
Old School
It’s not expected to pass.
JWR
The “Lose Cruz” super PAC is here! From NBC:
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
Also for Asian Americans. I find it amazing that Chinatowns are now considered these quaint tourist destinations rather than embarrassing relics of segregation. I was very surprised to learn my city (Pasadena) had expelled its Chinese community in a
race riotpogrom. This is the same city that was just fine having Black residents, but Chinese was apparently a step too far.JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: I misspoke, it’s PDT not PST out here, DST ruins everything.
So my argument is rebutted, never mind. //s
trollhattan
@Baud:
Very good!
ATM CAISO, which provides something like 80% of California’s electricity, reports 64% renewables, 19% natural gas, 6% large hydro, 8% nuclear. In sum, a tenth of the US population are using 80% non-fossil sourced electricity. (Of course the script flips at night when the solar fraction is not in the mix, but batteries are beginning to enter the reported data, plus pumped hydro.)
The Pale Scot
@prostratedragon:
I thought you posted this one
“WHY WON’T YOU LET ME LOVE YOU”
P. Bronks
Miss Bianca
@Kay:
Ok, not sure why I find that so funny, I just do.
Chris W
I agree—to a point. Context matters. If someone absorbs the belief that “fuck you!” is a righteous response in every situation where they’re on one side of a disagreement on a social or political issue, it makes it very difficult to address disagreements within families, for instance. My siblings and I each have a very different view of the world, what we would like to see, and what is or isn’t ok. Some of those differences are fundamental: In a civil war we’d find ourselves on different sides. What do we gain if we all disown each other, though? Civility for us isn’t a way of shutting each other down. It’s a way of ensuring that we continue to communicate, that we stay not just siblings but friends, and that our differences don’t prevent us from enjoying the things we have in common. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, civility matters a lot when the person you’re talking to *isn’t* trying to manipulate you or control the conversation.
kindness
I subscribe to the WaPo. Used to read the NY Times but refuse to give them my money after they rat fucked the Clintons, Obamas, democrats.
Citizen Alan
@JaySinWA:
Right wing alleged-Christians think it’s adorable to teach little children to change “Let’s Go Brandon!”
Matt McIrvin
@oatler: In hindsight my uncool, no-fun, babyish feeling that the educational TV shows on PBS* were actually better than the garbagey Saturday morning cartoons on the commercial networks… has held up. But the nostalgia people can have for that stuff is remarkable.
*(Captain Kangaroo gets honorary membership status, though he was on CBS)
(Granted, the dumpware filler included repurposed 1940s-50s Looney Tunes shorts, and those were brilliant)
Kay
@Llelldorin:
My daughter and son wouldn’t think this is funny- not because they’re woke but because they are genuinely horrified by people who hit children. Barr thinks this is some kind of act- “virtue signaling” – but she’s wrong. They really are horrified by her parenting. They think she’s bad and should work to improve.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: This is the heart of it. Very few people stay “cool” as they age and most of those who do are merely considered cool for an old person. Cool isn’t something you can demand as a birthright. Of course, all of this assumes that many of these people were ever actually cool.
cliosfanboy
@SiubhanDuinne:
she’s the Den Mother for some neo Nazis. Seriously…
JaySinWA
@Citizen Alan: Fricken shirtballs!
What sort of feldergarb is this.
trollhattan
@ColoradoGuy: Kent State happened just a few days after Reagan quipped that maybe it will take bloodshed to quell those Berkeley campus hippies, and when pressed on it, it was all “Can’t you take a joke, press people?”
What a sack of shit, Reagan.
gwangung
Well, a lot of it is that a lot of people still live there and it’s still an active center for Asian Americans. I.e., a living breathing community.
Many ARE going away, but that’s from gentrification
Baud
@Kay:
Funny and sad.
narya
@Matt McIrvin: Dave Barry once described Will as looking like someone who had inadvertently licked bus station plumbing. I’ve never been able to un-see that.
NoOneOfConsequence
Um. When I last heard of the term “respectability politics” it meant “black people should dress nicely, avoid coarse language, try to de-kink their hair, not listen to rap performed by Black rappers, and otherwise seem ‘respectable’ at all times.”
The scare quotes arounds “respectable,” are intended to point out that “respectable” is not any form of objective target, obviously.
I was the frequent target of bullies, and I was taught to try to “blend in.” I’m not Black, so I won’t talk about the version of respectability politics for Black people. I’ll just say, the concept of “try to blend in, so they don’t bully you” is a way to bully one’s self, in addition to a way to blame one’s self for the bullying of others.
Note: this isn’t a suggestion that people shouldn’t try to blend in, that they shouldn’t try to use protective coloring. It’s just, “being respectable” doesn’t work, other than as a short term disguise. Use it to slip out of *a* situation, but not as a defense. Because as soon as there’s a reason, a “respectable” othered-person still gets crapped on, only the people who are crapping are also *angry* because they were fooled into treating those people decently for a while.
Trust me: there’s no wild rage like the anger of a bigot who feels fooled by a bigotry-target.
Anyway: I’d heard of a different form of “respectability politics,” and that other form includes some critical bits about US history. No criticism of the original post.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I was raised without corporal punishment OR religion, and as a kid, I remember reading op-eds about how this was a sure road to criminality, and having these sneaking doubts about how maybe they were right and I was going to go bad at some point. Because nobody would put up with that stuff unless the danger was real, right?
trollhattan
@Kay: Piece of work, Barr. (Does she not yet have enough money? She now requires our attention, too?)
When she was in the process of getting her ass tossed from her own show, she was Twittering at DFH liberals about among other topics, (((George Soros))) and his betrayal of fellow Jews in WWII, if only we were ejumicated on the topic we’d know how evil he is. So I ejumicated myself to the extent of pinning his birth year as 1930 and thus, had he, for example, perhaps ratted out Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto he would have been doing so at age 12.
In sum, to hell with Roseanne Barr and her pretend butthurt.
Soprano2
@Kay: That’s because they know that their actual complaint sounds ridiculous in the “free speech” frame – they’re mad because people who they consider their “lessers” are disagreeing with them in public, sometimes in disrespectful ways. That’s what they’re really mad about. “How dare you show the world what a fool and idiot I am, I’m young and cutting edge” the 60+ year old cranks yell at the top of their lungs!
tECHIDNA
De-lurking to add my vote for not an editor and that this was a righteous and necessary rant!
Roger Moore
@gwangung:
It still seems weird to me. We don’t do the same thing with Black or Chicano neighborhoods, even though they’re also living, breathing communities that have unique food and other cultural heritage. We treat Asian American culture differently, as though going to Chinatown is actually a trip to a completely different country rather than just visiting a kitschy tourist trap.
Old School
@trollhattan:
The special aired four months ago, so I think it’s safe to say she didn’t get our attention.
Matt McIrvin
@NoOneOfConsequence:
G. K. Chesterton’s big complaint about Jews was that these ineluctibly foreign people were dressing and acting like ordinary Englishmen, and this seemed like some kind of sinister put-on.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, the GQP House is doing stuff again after the RWNJ caucus tantrums, but still failing … RollCall.com
Local control by local elected officials over local police. What a concept?!?
And a good and proper veto by Biden.
Cheers,
Scott.
JaySinWA
@Citizen Alan:
I blame that on the failure to teach phonics.
Cameron
@Jeffro: It’s Elon – he’s confused “Sulla” with “Sully,” a sometime diminutive for Andrew Sullivan.
Keith P.
@Roger Moore: I’m in Houston, where we’ve got *three* Asiatowns – the old “Chinatown” in downtown, the HUGE Bellaire Asiatown, and then the new, more upscale Katy Asiatown. I go to the latter two about once a week to eat – it’s not so much touristy as a different world. The street signs are in Chinese, and the density of restaurants would blow most people’s minds – in a single shopping center of 10 storefronts, 8 of them might be restaurants. And there are dozens and dozens of these. Then there are the grocery stores….usually massive with fish and fruit that are hard to find anywhere else along with sights like aisles – AISLES – of woks.
catclub
@JWR:
Yeah, right. I’ll believe it when I see it. I think this is much closer to Democratic grifters sucking money out of the Democratic rubes than a realistic shot at winning statewide in Texas..
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JaySinWA: And cursive
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Wouldn’t Barr’s kids be in their 40s or 50s by now?
Devore
John’s righteous rant should be on the front page of the Washington Post. Instead of the usual PC blather
Llelldorin
@Omnes Omnibus: I live in hope that some day, someone somewhere will consider me cool.
I’m fairly sure it’ll never happen, but a man can dream, can’t he?
Cameron
My favorite fictional incivility sarcastically laundered as civility, from Damon Runyon: “‘Shut up,” he explained.’
Redshift
@cmorenc:
I’m not sure I agree with that. There’s a lot of disdain and contempt on the MAGA side, but from what I can see it’s not directed at people asking them to be civil, because that doesn’t really happen.
Civility politics gets deployed in two situations, when it can be directed at “both sides,” like “partisanship” to avoid talking about substantive differences, and when it’s directed at liberals as a “we might agree with your goals but you’re doing it the wrong way” (which MLK wrote about so eloquently.)
Lyrebird
@Kay:
Note: I am posting this to make you laugh, not to take away from your point.
But didn’t you watch that Ratt video with Milton Berle in it???
Seriously, you have a point, and also, Milton Berle is amazing.
Soprano2
@smith: I’m sure that’s what happened to Bill Maher. As long as he could be gross about women he was OK with liberals, but once that started being verboten he got all pissy about “wokeness”.
UncleEbeneezer
@Roger Moore: Not sure I’d rate Pasadena as being overly tolerant/inclusive of black people. It’s very segregated and took its’ resistance of school integration all the way to SCOTUS.
Manyakitty
@EarthWindFire: where else could he possibly land?
trollhattan
@Keith P.: Noticed the other day that Caltrans has put a “Little Saigon” sign on the CA 99 exit that leads there in Our Fair City.
No great conclusion, just something I saw.
Matt McIrvin
@Keith P.: Flushing, Queens is now a much bigger Chinese (and other East Asian) neighborhood than Manhattan’s traditional Chinatown.
eversor
@smith:
That was one of the things that made it all the dumber. The polite police talk in a way nobody actually does. Sucking cock, blow job, hummer, lickenz the dickenz is how normal people talk. But all this dancing around the issue made it seem, and many things still, bizzare.
He got his dick sucked by an intern. He should not have. That was a bad choice and makes him a bad person. But right at that point it was an issue for Bill, Monica, and Hillary, and nobody fucking else. I remember the “semen stains” they are jizz stains or splooge, nobody will get offended stop talking about all this sex crap in generic medical terms to “keep the children innocent”.
We recently we had the WAP freakout where Ben Shapiro said if you can get your woman wet or make her cream you need to take her to the doctor because it means she has an STD. Which calls into question if Shapiro has ever had sex, let alone pleased a woman.
Though I’m not shocked that the crowd that wants to ban sex ed seems to have no idea how people actually fuck each other. Which is odd, because the Old Testament in the Bible talks about horse sized schlongs and donkey levels of nut busting and it’s only in the New Testament after Jesus comes about they start cracking down on sex.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Maher’s old talk show on Comedy Central was called “Politically Incorrect”! He was on this crap from day one, even when he was generally identified as a liberal.
Gravenstone
@Old School: Be hilarious if it fails in part due to the hardcore clowns voting it down because they’re still having a snit over Qevin and the debt ceiling.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Cameron: Sorry — Ring Lardner, he explained.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: what’s weird is that I keep thinking Flushing is semi-rural and not actually part of the city, and then I realized that that impression comes from reading Black Stallion books as a kid.
Yes, I am An Old.
Soprano2
@NoOneOfConsequence: I was told as a child that if I could just control my emotions and not cry when they bullied me it would stop. Rarely was there a suggestion that someone should make them stop bullying me! Bullying was seen as something normal that it was the target’s responsibility to live with and defuse, as if you were doing something that made them treat you like that. “If only you weren’t different in some way, they wouldn’t do that to you”.
different-church-lady
@catclub: It’s like saying Neil Armstrong has never been further away from the moon than he is now.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: True, but I think he’s gotten a lot worse in the past 10 years. He rarely ever has anyone on his show who will actively disagree with him about his “woke panic”, for example.
RaflW
There is already:
– The Institute for Civility in Government (http://instituteforcivility.org)
– National Institute For Civil Discourse (http://arizona.edu)
– The Civility Project (http://nyu.edu)
– Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement (CCDE) | UC, Berkeley
Clearly these four are failures. But Civility Mk.V will be a roaring success!
prostratedragon
@The Pale Scot: Heh!
JaySinWA
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Curse you. Well played
AM in NC
@smith: You are NOT misremembering that at all.
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin: Will had a recent column that (based on the couple-sentence summary, I didn’t read the whole thing) was about how it was a problem that people don’t dress like George Will any more, and they really ought to. Really. It was stated in terms of some great harm caused by “dressing casually.”
I stopped reading Will when I was (I think) in my twenties, and I discovered that nearly every one of his columns contained an obvious logical flaw that undermined his entire argument. Hence my decades of belief that the only reason he’s considered an “intellectual” is because he dresses the part and talks in a reasonable tone.
Quaker in a Basement
That’s the longest post I can recall seeing from John. Outstanding!
I’m also so old that I remember the day when I saw the rumors floating on the liberal blogs: the right-wing proprietor over at Balloon Juice is throwing in the towel! He’s ready to leave GWB and the GOP’s insanity behind.
And now here we are with Cole going full-on take-it-to-the-streets lefty. Sometimes things do get better.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: I only recently connected the dots to realize that Flushing is literally the “Ashen Land” from The Great Gatsby. And I’d already been there.
Redshift
@Kay: I’m trying to think of an audience of any age or demographic for “How to Raise Your Kids So They Turn Out Like Roseanne Barr,” and I’m coming up blank…
BeautifulPlumage
Speaking of uncivil – I won’t give them money, but LP sure knows how to get under TIFG’s skin! New whisper ad: https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1668967367513088000
am
That s.o.b. Overton should be honored by a plaque at the bottom of rest stop urinals for exactly this reason. A bunch of morons chanting his name and ritualistically moving things towards the unthinkable is why we are where we are, and “centrist” organizations are trying to find common ground between “I want to persecute and harm my political opponents” and “I do not want to be persecuted or harmed”.
Fred Ryan will be as useful at this this as a one legged man at an a**-kicking contest. The problem is concentration of wealth and unparalleled tools for manipulating populations at scale that are getting exponentially more effective every minute.
Wyatt Salamanca
12:23 PM · Jun 14, 2023
https://twitter.com/kenbensinger/status/1669017693679386624
smith
@eversor: I think it was just a few years back that a woman legislator in some red state was censured for saying “vagina” on the floor of her chamber.
libarbarian
Small dissent.
The spread of the idea that “not being an asshole” == “selling out” or that concern over politeness and manners is “always” a cover for ulterior motives is the main reason that progressive politics has been so dominated by lying hypocrites for the past decade. There are plenty of so-called “progressives” who don’t really give a shit about injustice. They just want to act like assholes to people and learned that you are more tolerated being an asshole if you lie and say you are doing it out of righteous anger.
Same with the “own the libs” MAGA fucks. The desire to act like an asshole comes first. The justifications come later.
Being civil and trying to not alienate people you want to reach is a GOOD THING. Sure, sometimes people can use a fake concern about manners and “civility” to avoid uncomfortable discussions. But if you fetishize “righteous anger” you just end up being a mark for another kind of asshole grifter.
Soprano2
I tried to do a gift article link of the Greg Sargent about my local school targeting “Maus” for removal; it failed because they’re getting too many requests! That school is considered one of the best in the area; that they would do something so stupid would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. I think they really don’t like it because it teaches kids to be tolerant and accepting of those who are different, and in these days of “woke panic” and “trans panic” we can’t be having that! s/s/s/s/
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BeautifulPlumage: I couldn’t follow the jumpcuts and ID everybody, but I assume Mark Meadows was in there? I would have lingered on that image a bit more, let trump burn every conceivable bridge MM has back to the Land Of Wingnut Welfare and leave Mr Smith’s interview room the only place for him to turn
Chief Oshkosh
@Redshift:
And Buckley before him. Fucking racist AF motherfucker,
…but so erudite!
cliosfanboy
@S Cerevisiae:
Sadly, No! Was great.
Wyatt Salamanca
“All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do bothsidesism.”
JHotard, PhD, psychologist, disinfo expert @upine
https://twitter.com/upine
Roger Moore
@Keith P.:
Here in the LA area, there’s still the “old” Chinatown, which is actually more Vietnamese now than Chinese. It’s actually a replacement for the original Chinatown, which was razed to make space for Union Station, so it largely dates from the 1930s. Despite that, it was deliberately built to look like a traditional Chinatown, i.e. like what Chinese cities looked like in the mid 19th Century. It’s largely a tourist location these days.
If you want to go to good Chinese restaurants or shop in Asian grocery stores, you would go to one of the several cities that are now majority ethnic Chinese, like Arcadia, Monterrey Park, or Diamond Bar. They have genuinely spectacular restaurants and markets, but they look like a modern city rather than a re-creation of what a Chinese city looked like in the 19th Century. They’re just neighborhoods where lots of Chinese Americans live, rather than a formal ghetto like the old Chinatown was.
cliosfanboy
@Lyrebird:
and he was famously hung like a bull elephant
Roger Moore
@UncleEbeneezer:
It was segregated, but Black people were allowed, even encouraged, to live there. Interestingly, the traditional Black neighborhood was very close to Millionaire’s Row, because most of the Blacks moved to Pasadena to work as domestic servants for the ultra-rich. In contrast, the Chinese Americans were violently expelled from the city. That’s a meaningful difference.
FelonyGovt
@Jeffro: Does he realize that when the Republic is “overthrown by force” his privileged whiny white racist ass will be among the first to have his wealth confiscated?
gwangung
Huh. I don’t. Then again, I’m not part of your “we”. (And the kitschyness is a different part of the place)
cain
@Roger Moore: Reminds me of 82nd St in Portland. The Portland, Chinatown is mostly performative. It was considered a ‘bad part of town’ it is also close to Union Station but it’s not exactly a great part of town and probably the last bit of downtown Portland that isn’t completely gentrified.
am
@libarbarian:
I think that’s a really good point, and I’m only replying since I was quite uncivil with my tone in some replies, by reasonable standards.
Game theory is very interesting here. The conservative movement’s biggest problem – if I may – is that they rationally perceived their optimal strategy was to go maximalist rather than negotiate. They did this for so long that they no longer behave rationally – in a technical, game theory equilibria seeking, sense – and they radicalized as a group.
A true centrist group would see the need to restore the national Republican party and its associated groups to a rational actor. At this point, from my seat, that means a combined strategy of negative and positive results that highlight a severe cost for partisanship and a benefit for centrism. Not rewarding them by moving the center of the discussion based on their radical behavior. I mean this in a much more concrete way than “tut-tuts” on Sunday shows and other hand-wringing from a bunch of useless people that imagine themselves as party of DC’s royal court. It needs to be at a strategic outcome level. I think Biden’s budget negotiations are a sign that others see this, too.
Imposing a cost on people using civility in bad faith would go a long way to restoring the power of people acting with civility in good faith.
Omnes Omnibus
@eversor: There are lots of people who do not use phrases like “sucking cock” in general conversation. There are also lots who do. No one should get the vapors about it, but pretending everyone does it is also wrong.
Bill Clinton was not a bad person because he had affairs. He was a person who fell short of what people expected of him. A lot Judeo-Christian moralizing popping up there.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I save it for family gatherings.
Redshift
@Chris W: No argument with context being important, but I think we can take it as a given that a complaint about civility from the WaPo editor or the Reagan Center for You People Should Know Your Place and Not Talk Back isn’t about how you should talk to your family.
With people we know, there are always more options (though not always more good ones.) And it’s better if you can accommodate each other without a fight.
But one of the arguments about “being civil” and “it’s terrible that people are just cutting out people they disagree with” that always infuriated me was the one about dealing with the classic right-wing uncle type at Thanksgiving — “why don’t you just not talk about politics?”
Right-wing uncles getting called out or disinvited came after years of everyone else wanting to not talk about politics (and often saying so explicitly), and they just wouldn’t. So we were left with a choice of suffering in silence and everyone but RWU being miserable, or fighting back and everyone being miserable but at least not having him believing he’d “won”, or not inviting him and having a nice time like we used to. And you know what we didn’t get from pundits all those years RWUs were becoming a trope that was universally recognized? Calls for him to “be civil,” or not talk about politics for the sake of everyone else.
brantl
@tobie: I think that’s Palpiloma.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Thank you for being an example to us all.
...now I try to be amused
@eversor:
That inspired a discussion board post:
What shall we tell young children about the Clinton blowjob scandal?
Semen.
Semen stain.
Stain, men, stain.
Cameron
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: “You’re right – and I’m civil enough to admit it,” he cursed.
...now I try to be amused
@oklahomo:
I miss the Editors of the Poor Man Tribune. They had a strange love of Airwolf. They measured awesomeness on a scale of one to ten Airwolves.
BeautifulPlumage
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I couldn’t tell for sure, but maybe the point of the quick cuts was to help highlight alllll the folks who have flipped without being too specific. Maybe they’ll make another cut emphasizing the staff & lawyers who turned.
Jeffro
@FelonyGovt:
Of course not – he’s talking about a right-wing coup, not a left-wing one. It’s the only kind he can picture, I’m sure.
All these pyromaniacs on the right, just playing with gas and matches every single day…
Jeffro
And while GQP politicians blather on, trying to make false equivalencies and incite Insurrection II, Republican insiders know the score: trumpov is going down and going to do time.
Omnes Omnibus
@libarbarian: Yes, the idea that coarseness equals authenticity is as dumb in its own way as enforced civility. FFS!
Ohio Mom
@Roger Moore: Oh yeah, the autism world is divided between “I am autistic” and “I have autism.”
The first group insists that autism makes them who they are, the second group insists their humanity rates more highly than their neurology.
It’s angels dancing on pinheads to me. I have more urgent concerns.
JaySinWA
@Jeffro: I don’t think Musk would end up on the right side of the right if we had the coup he envisions. At best he would end up paying tribute to the new boss. More likely he would end up doing something to piss them off. Too big a target, he’d need to fund his own private army and then manage to keep them from taking his head.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
Most Chinatowns had unique architecture, markets, signage vastly different from the norm. They also generally had a density of multiuse occupancy that was uncommon.
Vancouver’s Chinatown is quite famous, but struggling now.
Most Chinese immigrants and Chinese Canadians prefer Richmond, “Mall” world surrounded by suburbia.
There is a tendency for new immigrants who have english as another language to cluster together, thus Commercial Drive, (Hipster central now but it used to be Little Italy), West Van, (Little Iran), Broadway South, (Little Saigon), East Van Halen, south of 42nd St, (Little Punjab), Mallardville, (Frenchtown).
Here we even have Royal Ave West, known as Newfietown.
...now I try to be amused
@Jeffro:
I love how they feel the need to say it. Or, they protest, “I’m not a fan of Trump, but…” It reminds me of how no German would admit to being a Nazi after the war.
trollhattan
@Wyatt Salamanca:
“Addressed.” High-fives and attaboys all around.
If a dictator has his rival arrested, is he technically “wannabe” or a Fully Functioning Dictator?
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: Kind of strange how they’re so convinced he’s going down when so many of us are completely convinced the fix is in and he won’t.
JPL
@Wyatt Salamanca: hmm How was it addressed?
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Both sides are full of panicky people?
Kay
@Lyrebird:
You have to read their Twitter to appreciate how horrible they are:
They all believe they’re wildly edgy and original too – “piers morgan:uncensored”
Just insufferable.
Elon MUsk will say the most banal, obvious thing and these ninnies will just rush to quote him. They’re just not that smart.
brantl
@Lyrebird: Milton Berle was tired when he was new.
Ohio Mom
@Miss Bianca: My parents’ generation grew up when Flushing was semi-rural. My aunt would reminisce about a farm stand there that had really fresh corn.
Ohio Mom
@Matt McIrvin: And Jackson Heights, Queens is known for its strip of Indian restaurants and stores — Little India.
Gravenstone
@Wyatt Salamanca: Backslaps, high fives and “atta boys” all around!
eclare
@Kay:
Something has really snapped in her head. Her original show dealt with lots of mature issues, including parents who hit their kids. The show was decidedly against, as Roseanne and her sister were hit by their father.
Don’t know what happened.
brantl
@brantl: and I misspelled it.
Gravie
I’m proud to say my husband had an email flame war with Fred Ryan about some Republican fuckery when Ryan was at Albritton Communications. He wasn’t very civil then.
brantl
@eclare: She became a lunatic.
Manyakitty
@Gravie: he sure as fuck isn’t now. Has he even SEEN his (soon to be former) paper?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
His reputation as a joke thief went back to vaudeville, IIRC. In his golden years he became the most-loathed host in the history of SNL, until (I think) Steven Seagal stole the title.
Anthony
Hey Memphis and Nashville residents — you can vote for Justin Pearson and Justin Jones in the special primary elections tomorrow, then again on August 3rd in the special elections, they are both running opposed.
EarthWindFire
This. Always followed by “like MLK and his followers”. They never like it when you point out that their “respectability” never stopped Bull Connor from siccing the hose on them or kept MLK out of jail. Funny, that.
EarthWindFire
@eclare: Maybe she could act back then?
libarbarian
@am:
I agree that, in my experience, anything self-branded as “centrist” or “pro-civility” is a red-flag for vacuous pedantry at best and, more frequently, poorly disguised partisan hackery
However, “Civility” bullshitters, like all other bullshitters, will invariably tie themselves into knots and make obvious hypocrites of themselves through very selective calls for civility. These kinds of douchebags leave trails of evidence behind them and proving that they are not credible isn’t hard to do.
AWOL
@Kay: One of the leftist signers, an admirer of the artiste Woody Allen, just happened to be paling around with Jeffrey Epstein at MIT.
@Matt McIrvin: I was shocked to discover that prim little MLB-sucking weasel is an open atheist.
Geminid
Louisiana Army base Fort Polk has been renamed Fort Johnson, after WWI hero William Henry Johnson.
Sergeant Johnson was awarded the Croix de guerre (with star and bronze palm) for his tenacious defense against a German raiding party in the Argonne Forest. Johnson suffered 21 wounds while repelling the nighttime attack, and killed two German soldiers with his bolo knife while rescuing comrade Needham Roberts from capture.
Former President Teddy Roosevelt called Johnson one of the five bravest Americans to fight in the conflict.
William Henry Johnson was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and moved to Albany as a teenager. He worked as a “redcap” porter at Albany Union Station, and then enlisted in the 369th “Harlem Hellfighters” Regiment a month after the U.S. declared war on Germany.
Many white soldiers and officers complained about serving with a Black unit, so General Pershing was glad to “lend” the 369th Regiment to the French. General Foch posted the unit to the Argonne sector, where Sergeant Johnson was to send the remainder of a 36 man raiding party scurrying back to their trenches.
Sergeant Johnson came home a hero, and he began a lecture tour. His recounting of the discrimination he and his fellow Black soldiers experienced upset authorities, and the tour was cut short when Johnson was arrested for wearing his uniform without authorization.
In 2015 President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Johnson the Congressional Medal of Honour “for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his own life.”
And for those who celebrate, today is the 159th anniversary of General Leonidas Polk’s death in battle on June 14, 1864. He and a party of officers were observing Union positions near Marietta, Georgia when General Sherman spotted them and told a subordinate to disperse them. A skillful gunner from the 1st Ohio Light Artillery hit Polk with his third shot, nearly cutting the mediocre Lieutenant General in half with a 3 inch rifled shell.
AWOL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Also signed to the worst contract in history by CBS—$1,000,000 for 20 years back in the early 1950s. His career bombed shortly after that—just cameo-type crap like “Mad, Mad World.”
He’s also another straight dude who cashed in on camp and disn’t have his life threatened—he used to cross-dress for laffs.
Odie Hugh Manatee
When you write like this I almost want to yell “AMEN!” after reading it, and I’m not religious…lol! This is Cole Unplugged and I’m here for it.
Thank you for saying what needs to be said for all to hear, John.
jame
Bravo, John! That’s the best explanation of who has “civility concerns” and how they use them.
moonbat
Rave on, John Cole!
Screw editors!
Bill Arnold
@cliosfanboy:
Careful, there. Video at link.
https://boingboing.net/2022/07/01/an-elephants-prehensile-penis-is-like-a-second-trunk.html
Tony G
@cope: That’s a good point. However, the latest statistics show that more that 95% of the nation’s fainting couches are now manufactured in China.
Tony G
Ha. The “liberal” MSNBC banning the brilliant Marci Wheeler for saying the word “blowjob”. To state the obvious: all of the commercial media (plus the corporate-sponsored “public” media like NPR and PBS) are, by definition, right-wing, because they all serve their corporate masters. Something like Fox News and OAN let their freak flags fly and don’t pretend to be anything other than right-wing propaganda — but the “reasonable” alternatives like CNN and MSNBC are not much different.
Stv
Mr. Cole!
Chris T.
@Roger Moore:
You mean it’s not a strange, magical foreign land as depicted in the documentary Big Trouble in Little China?