I can’t top this https://t.co/HQ7kw2bgDl
— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 3, 2023
Po-faced both-siderist zombie pundits never die. They don’t even lose their precious top-grade media slots, dammit!
yes, so weird how "somehow" that always happens pic.twitter.com/GCuyc1QwfF
— Karl Bode (@KarlBode) August 3, 2023
… Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like “problematic,” “cisgender,” “Latinx” and “intersectional” is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.
We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom…
Life was just fine for David Brooks under The Traditional Morality: It didn’t stop him from nestling down in a snug top-tier media job, writing best-selling books to explain why kids these days are WRONG and RISIBLE, or dumping the wife that helped make his career for a much younger ‘research assistant’ fresh out of Wellesley. Brooks can’t understand why the rest of us peons keep raising such a stink about personal freedom — no wonder the rubes are resentful!
This, in particular, goes in the "You're so close to getting it" hall of fame. Yes, a Trump voter is EXACTLY someone who hears Barack Obama use the word "smart" and immediately thinks "He's calling me stupid." I wonder why that is. pic.twitter.com/lClSiB69mG
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) August 3, 2023
British expat, now living in DC:
ironically picking up his shitty book about 'bourgeois bohemians,' full of lavish praise from supposedly serious outlets on the back, was a major step in my general cynicism toward the US elite. people who would praise something this dumb and full of lies couldn't be trusted
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) August 3, 2023
I live in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation and have a large number of similar MAGA neighbors. There *is* an explanation that applies to many of them. ??
— Tom Tell (@ThomasTell) August 4, 2023
Resentful and well-to-do in their communities. “Support for Trump was strongest among the locally rich — that is, white voters with incomes that are high for their area.” https://t.co/QgnhLSiGwM
— Jennifer Baty (@JenBaty) August 3, 2023
Brooks and his ilk are busy creating, as Adam might say, a permission structure for the out’n’proud squirmy white racists…
NEW @RichardHanania is a right-wing star. A @UTAustin scholar, his fans include JD Vance, Thiel, Musk, Sacks, Rufo. @HarperCollins will publish his book "The Origins of Woke"
HuffPost found he used a pseudonym for yrs to write for white supremacist sites https://t.co/NOPSmIc0vH
— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) August 4, 2023
Three of those fans are white guys who spent parts of their childhoods in apartheid-era South Africa. https://t.co/ubBxezwJhT
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 4, 2023
(And Vance and Rufo are the wholly-owned creations of the Apartheid Three.)
The secret writings of Richard Hanania, who is about to have his book published by Harper Collins after endorsements from Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie.
Remarkable scoop from @letsgomathias.https://t.co/rDNNaPqlmp pic.twitter.com/KAJAemuAo4
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 4, 2023
(Nothing to stop y’all from moving your vast fortunes talents to Orania, boys. Well, maybe not Sacks…)
When you’re a very normal person with normal interests and not a racist dork pic.twitter.com/I7K80EQCKy
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) August 4, 2023
Yeah, Tommy Tuberville is racist. Richard Hanania is so deep in the weeds of genocidal fantasy that he should be barred from ever renting a Ryder truck. https://t.co/dTBXs1DbZF
— zeddy (@Zeddary) August 4, 2023
Baud
David Brooks: Working Man’s Hero.
HumboldtBlue
Japan v Norway is a far more interesting and enjoyable way to enjoy these early morning hours as the round of 16 is underway.
Fuck the racists for two hours.
Tony Jay
Smart of Brooks to site himself at the heart of the ‘educated, intellectual elite’ whose norm-shifting tyranny he then gives himself licence to blame for all the ills of the modern era. Sorry, did I say smart, I meant typically shifty and as boring as shades of magnolia.
And on the topic of far-Right racist propagandists being given megaphones from which to spew their position, I’m currently in Vienna. Last night we walked past a busy park in Schwedenplatz where they have a monument that I’m pretty sure names it as the site of the Gestapo HQ for Austria.
They’d pulled it down and said it was a bad thing, so it’s not like there aren’t already some pretty long lasting and traditional norms in place for dealing with the things that Brooks excuses and Hanania represents. There’s just no excuse.
HumboldtBlue
Oh my word, Norway, that’s disastrous, you can’t give away a goal to Japan like that.
That’s unfortunate, but Japan’s pressure is the cause.
Woooooaaaaahhhhhh…
What a goal for Norway! Got the ball into the box in the air and scored.
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: Have a pastry for me, please! Vicariously enjoying your travels.
===
Amazing find by that blogger. If indeed Richard Hanna = Richard Hoste. Wonder if Harper Collins will drop the book. And perhaps some other source will publish it. And if U Texas drops him. Will be interesting to see how much traction this story gets.
WRT Bobo Brooks: I don’t even click on him for the reader comments, but maybe I should, on this one.
BellyCat
Brooksie’s target demographic are the cretins without kids screaming that they shouldn’t have to pay school tax. What an asshole.
Tony Jay
@Elizabelle:
Absolutely will. We got here yesterday and booked into our fantastic hotel with the beautifully decorated room length window that I’m studiously not comparing to those Nazi-era symbols from a couple weeks ago. Popped out for a bite to eat and ended up having an awesome Alt Wien Schnitzel in a genuine Bierkeller looking place where I got to put the last two months of Duolingo to use. I feel validated.
Here until this evening then the night train to Paris, so I get to order food in German again. Entschuldigung!
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Elizabelle: HarperCollins is owned by Murdoch. I would be surprised if one of the chief peddlers of hate would distance himself from a Nazi.
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay:
@Elizabelle: Have another pastry for me, Tony.
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: Have never been to Vienna. It’s on the 3 year list.
Have been to Salzburg a few times, and loved it. Enjoy every schnitzel. And pastry. And walk. And beer. And …
mrmoshpotato
@Tony Jay:
Night trains go to places other than Munich? 🤔
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle: Salzburg is a lovely city.
Tony Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
They all end up in Georgia, it’s a norm.
piratedan
@Elizabelle: well, I kind of doubt that UT will care since he’s operating under Bari Weiss’ organization, where he fits in nicely with the other members of the Legion of Cruelty and Mean Girls.
As for Brooks himself, enough has been said by others more eloquent than I about what a waste of oxygen he is and how it’s proof of no greater deity at large to deal with his level of hypocrisy
Elizabelle
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Yikes. Did not know that.
And: still waiting to see how the Hanania*/Hoste saga plays out. Wondering if he might be too radioactive for even Murdoch. To see.
(Learning the spelling: think “mania.”)
Am reading the HuffPost article on him, and seeing that he was bragging, under his own name, about being terrible in his teenage food service jobs. He appears to have decided that is a sign of his advanced intelligence, and that those who succeed at them are lesser people.
That is sadly amazing to me. I was a terrible waitress at first, for too long, because it can be hard to get the timing down and that job is all about timing. Never occurred to me to denigrate those who were better workers, or to see my own faults as a … sign of intelligence. Gah.
Doug
Friends don‘t let friends read David Brooks.
TriassicSands
Relax, Davy, of course you’re one of the ‘Bad Guys.” You always have been. And it is overwhelmingly likely you always will be exactly that. If you don’t want to be a “bad guy” you have to jettison the whole conservative thing, forget about the Republican Party (only disaster there), and start supporting politicians and policies that might actually be good for the American people.
Yes, the debt is a problem (not that you guys have ever done anything to address that), but the answer is not getting rid of critically important programs; the answer is to find a balance between those programs and our taxation. Europeans, especially Scandinavians, pay significant taxes, but they get something for their taxes. In the US, people whine endlessly about taxes, which are far short of most prosperous European country’s, but all we get for our taxes are an unimaginably poor health care system with shameful outcomes, especially for the people you guys are always trying to disenfranchise, designed by Rube Goldberg on a bad acid trip, an inadequate retirement program that you guys want to cut, eliminate, or privatize, and an unbelievably bloated Defense Department. Maybe that is why the happiest people are in northern Europe and the Republican base wants to toss out democracy and replace it with a brain-dead dictator. And that must be because Democrats would like to have universal health care, a better retirement program, and a much more efficient Defense Department. (On the last of those, Democrats need to work harder to improve things, but it’s difficult when your guys won’t shut up about “weak on defense.”)
No doubt about it, Davy, you are definitely one of the bad guys. You were yesterday, you are today, and five will get you a billion you will be in the future. So, wring your hands and keep doing what you’re doing. What could go wrong?
Baud
Also too
Nominated!
Also three,
The NYT is clearly following the GOP into becoming a 100% trolling operation.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Turtles all the way down?
No. It’s the NYT. Slapdicks! All the way down!
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
One reason the self involved take so long to actually make forward progress is that they spend most of their time either looking in a mirror or imagining what they look like in a mirror, and thinking that there can be nothing better, when in fact the silent humans that just get on with it, who don’t need their egos fluffed every 5 minutes, or even more often, do far more, far better.
Anne Laurie
Amazing work by that blogger, yes indeed! But the ‘rumors’ about Hanania / Hanna / Hoste have been public for long enough that it was how I recognized his name when it appeared. That’s part of their ‘Great Game’ — Richie bragged about his racism, but only among ‘the right people’ (other bigots), so that any protest from decent folk could be dismissed as ‘What, is he to be held responsible for these mere ugly rumors? What does it say about your kind that someone like you would even believe such vile things!’
Brooks’ job was to look sincere when accusing appalled normies of ‘secret elite bigotry against fine hard-working lower-class White people.’ He had to hold his face in the correct Sincere Astonishment expression while his fellow racists stood in his shadow, snickering & nudging each other. At the FTFNYTimes, that’s why he made the big money — he has a real gift for understanding how to (literally) White-wash the dog whistles.
eversor
Got the news dad is on his way off the earth last night and has at best two weeks left. I’ve got to go out there and make peace which is going to be hard as I cannot bring the woman I’m engaged to there as they hate her. But, I still need to do it. He’s also in his 90s and Jewish so he survived the Nazi’s, Korean War, Nixon White House, and Ed Teller (which has come up since Oppenheimer came out as Dad’s opinions on nuclear war are… complex and I’ll leave it at that).
Wasn’t sure what to do, going out there tomorrow to talk to him and hopefully bury some gripes, not in each others backs, though my family was always for stabbing in the front and laughing about it. I did get a chuckle though last night. Went out for Omakase Sushi last night with the elder brother at the fanciest place in DC. This is one of those 240 bucks a person to walk in the door, 65 bucks a pour of whiskey, and the sake can run over a grand a bottle. It’s a special ocassion thing and we both needed it on having the news.
After several hours of being fed, at the seven only seat private sushi bar behind doors and cloth, we got the bill, 2.4 grand worth of total damage. At which point elder eversor looks at me and says, 2400 for sushi! I blame Joe Biden for the inflation. Which well played bro, well played. I don’t remember how I got home, somehow I got up at 04:30 despite plowing through a bunch of 65 a pour whiskey and the sake. Elder eversor is passed out on the floor. Which also well played.
Which I only bring up the bill after the earlier talk about someone throwing a fit about 50 buck a pound fillet at Wegmans on twitter.
I guess watching all these Nazi’s go about their normal lives and watching people excuse them while hurling fits about the price of food, while I’m dealing with dad passing on, a devastated mother, and looking at my outrageous dinner bill and saying “well, we knew what we were getting into when we walked through that door, and it was fucking amazing!” I still feel like I’m in a world gone mad.
But yeah, let’s go Brandon is the best joke for “I walked into an omakase sushi bar for private service and drank 30 year old Japanese whiskey and it was 2400 for two people this inflation is out of hand” sort of sums everything in a joke.
Baud
@eversor:
Sorry about your dad.
Baud
Some (temporary) good news.
HumboldtBlue
@eversor:
I’ll say this, if your dad doesn’t bring you up on charges for the rampant use of rogue apostrophes, he’s slacking.
Take some love from the North Woods with ya and pass it around.
Baud
Via Mastodon, apparently WaPo is getting in on the trolling operation.
https://mastodon.social/@Green_Footballs/110832999443956597
Elizabelle
@eversor: I am so sorry about your dad’s downturn. It’s good that you will be able to see him, even as you cannot resolve a lifetime of issues. My sympathies to your family.
@Anne Laurie:
Work is the word; thank you. Still reading the article, and it is comprehensive.
And good on you for tying him to Brooks, who is a Hanania for the privileged class. No whitewashing for Brooks; he is your Farrow & Ball purveyor.
HumboldtBlue
Norway is working hard to tie this match up, they’ve gotta lean on Japan and use that size.
What a ball for Japan and what a beautiful run and finish!
That’s beautiful football.
This is clinical stuff, well done, Japan.
Elizabelle
@piratedan: Bari Weiss. Oh dear. Still, he may prove radioactive for her, too. And then she can do some more whining about cancel culture.
@mrmoshpotato: It is. And I love Europe, and seeing it from a train. Albeit: airfare is so much less expensive there, too.
All the more reason to denigrate Europe and Europeans, as Triassic Sands points out. Once people get a look at what is possible, as opposed to what they have been told …
mrmoshpotato
@Ruckus: Good explanation, but you left out them trying to suck their own cocks.
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: Truth. I wish this particular self-involved a-hole had more respect for those who have to learn to navigate in a different language and culture, too. Maybe he gets a few points for having mastered acadamia, but, there is a whole world out there.
Going to try to get a little more sleep, but might be up for the count. To see ….
PBK
@eversor: You’re a good person to want to reach out to your dad. Family can be messy and complicated. Wishing you all the best.
TriassicSands
@eversor:
Sorry to hear about your dad. But I hope your final words together will bring you some peace and, sigh, yes, closure. When my father was dying (only 66, prostate cancer), I went home to help take care of him. He had some fine qualities, but had also been a difficult person. I stayed up with him at night, and we managed to get it all said before the end, which at that point was a relief — to end his suffering.
Give it your best, and I hope you can find that kind of peace and acceptance at the end, which we all finally reach.
eversor
@Baud:
I’m not worried about him. He’s fine. He wants to die. We’ve had a couple off conversations where he told me he wanted to go, but was sticking around for mom, but maybe I could smother him with a pillow because if I used the .45 mom would see the mess. Which started in jest, but they turned serious later.
He can’t eat solid food, hasn’t for months, he’s mentally coherent but physically shot and that’s a sort of hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. In a way, I’m sort of glad? He should die and he’s not dead because they have millions to spend on medical wizardry and mom wasn’t ready to let go.
Sister is a lawyer so she’ll handle the legal stuff. He’s going to be buried in Arlington and mom wants me to deal with that aspect though dad long ago handled the basics.
I think I’ll go out with my brother again tonight and get smashed again. Before we both go confront this tomorrow. Little sister eversor will not talk to the elder brother eversor cause reasons (that are now over a decade in the past! christ my family can hold a grudge).
The sick thing is all the calls coming in from random ass relatives, some of which I never met, trying to claw through his estate. It’s like no. All that goes to mom. And we are moving her out of that farther away house, selling it, and then buying her a one floor house in straight cash with HER money close to me, brother, and sister. So we can assist her. She’s younger than him by a good grip (second marriage, and she proposed to him) so she’s probably got another 15+ and we’d like to have her close enough for the grandkids (not mines!) and to be able to just swing by on a lark.
He doesn’t even want any of them to know where he is buried. He was the youngest of his friends, they all died over a decade ago. The only people he wants knowing where he is are me, sister, brother, mother.
He did want to see Trump hung before he went on, not jailed, hung. As he put it, he watched the US soldiers kill his tormentors when they saved him in WW2. He’s been utterly freaked out by the whole White Christian Nationalism turn of the US and the treason and I’m sure if he were younger, and had the power, he’d hang all their asses as well.
It’s a level of trauma and anger even I don’t posses, and I know I’m capable of spectacular levels of violence, but on that, I do think he is right.
Hearing from random second cousins and whatever that they got the news and what is up with all the money is what drove me and my brother to sushi + alcoholic bender. I’m still fucking mad. He’s not even in the ground yet, I saw you last over 30 years ago, I’m not your friend, I don’t consider you family, leave me the fuck alone, and if you are daft enough to call my mom me or the older brother are going to drive/fly out there and beat the bloody shit out of you.
You know who counts when a death is greated by “are you all ok, what can I do” vs “oh hey, you don’t remember me, but fire sale on the assets right?”
Dad never cheated on taxes either. He liked them. After all, taxes paid for the US soldiers who saved him. Paid for his education and employment for years. We are donating a lot of money.
I also go have to go there and take posession of a lot of pictures that were so gory the Holocaust Museum wouldn’t even show them. Dad hates that place as well for being “limp wristed chicken shit hypocrites”.
I’m not sure what to do. Elder eversor will wake up at some point and we’ll go get plastered again and then start coming up with a plan. But I swear to a god, that do not believe in, that I will curb stomp the next relative that calls little sister about the money and legal aspects of it.
HumboldtBlue
What a save from Japan’s goalie!!!
Huge play!
HumboldtBlue
Japan won the World Cup title in 2011 and after that, fell off the map. Now they are back in the quarters and looking like the best team in the tournament.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@mrmoshpotato: Orient Express goes to Constantinople
p.a.
So BoBo wonders how America’s meritocracy got us to this point? Basic flaw in premise. Meritocracy? Really?
OzarkHillbilly
@eversor: Sorry to hear this. I had a… complicated relationship with my father too. I still cried like a baby at the graveside ceremony.
Stay strong.
Kay
How would you like to be a woman, Black or Latino (or, worse, any combination thereof) and attending/working at the University of Texas or Stanford where the fucking idiots who make decisions at these places designated this guy a “visiting scholar”?
Good work, elite anti-wokesters! “High Standards!” “Meritocracy!” “Rigor!” They do more vetting of the night shift manager at the 711.
Baud
@Kay:
The only time these assholes believe in evolution is when they cite it incorrectly to subjugate others.
eversor
@Baud:
Keep in mind, thanks to Christianity, a lot of them don’t believe in evolution at all. Also Chris Rufu, of CRT and trans fame, started off pushing intelligent design. Again, go look around, scratch the surface of all these issues, and a cross and bible will show up.
OzarkHillbilly
Funny guy. Obviously, he didn’t have a mother.
Kay
@Baud:
And, he complains about affirmative action. He was hired by the University of Texas, by Bari Weiss, by the NYTimes and the Washington Post on the basis of plagiarizing the Turner Diaries. NONE of what he spouts is new, or original, or insightful, or even his own work. He pulled 100% of this crap off Right wing message boards. His “scholarship” is content from local newspaper comment sections.
Do any of these people READ anything? When they’re promoting this crap – this cheap, thrown together garbage – does some inkling creep in that they have heard this… somewhere before?
Maybe they haven’t. Maybe they have not and do not read anything.
dm
Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender have been taking a lot about how the AI doomers/AI corporadoes are all deeply mixed in with eugenics, trans-humanism, the sort of “effective altruism” that lets people starve today to make life better for the billions who will live in space colonies in 10,000 years (which they label TESCREAL, though I can’t remember all the bits of the acronym, plus “TREACLES” was right there).
Anyway, Hanania sounds like he fits right into that crowd, only with the mask off.
Baud
@eversor:
Sure. There’s no question right wingers in the US employ the Bible and Christianity as a tool of oppression. Same is true of right wing Muslims with respect to the Koran, or right wing Indians with respect to the Hindu tradition. Religion isn’t the only thing they use, but it’s always a part of their playbook.
Brachiator
Does Brooks have a baby mamma we don’t know about?
What a bunch of smug, self-righteous bullshit. And largely irrelevant, impotent elite pundits like this joker give themselves far too much credit. YouTube influencers probably have more influence than elite pundits.
Jesus. I picked the wrong night to have a bout of insomnia.
Baud
@Kay:
I really think the only due diligence these elite institutions do is ask whether libs will be successfully trolled. I feel like half the economy runs on trolling nowadays.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@eversor:
Your pops sounds like an amazing guy – like someone I would have enjoyed knowing. Despite whatever family tension existed, you have been lucky to have him, because he formed a lot of what you are now.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Yet they constantly complain about liberal cancel culture and liberal restrictions on their freedom.
Anne Laurie
For Brooks, ‘meritocracy’ means letting anyone not a White male go to the best schools and get the important jobs, just because they’re smart or lucky enough to do better at the gatekeeping exams.
Same whinge as every other white-collar racist: *His* world was ‘better’ when there was no competition from women, people of color, most immigrants, et al. But he ‘maintains his impartiality’ by blaming ‘meritocracy’ for making the failsons of car dealships and other local baronies compete for slots, first at the ivy-league universities and later at prestige corporations & top government positions, with the common rabble (everyone not a white male). The fact that it’s hard to do this without ever slipping up on the overt racism is, seriously, why he’s had such a successful career among the ‘elites’!
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
On a good note, it looks like the Unlubed Dildo of Consequences has arrived for the bloated orange mediocrity. That threatening post from late yesterday is the subject of a timid filing for Chutkan at 10 pm last night, inspiring an enraged “I didn’t mean what I said, it was just a political joke” statement at 1 am.
They’re relying on Laura et al to equivocate, Chutkan to go ballistic and scold them for being timid, and letting a hammer fall hard.
Were I on the bench, it would result in an electronic tether, effective house arrest, and a prohibition on smartphone use with gag order.
Kay
There’s a late surge of money from the Right into Ohio’s Issue 1 election. The “NO” side had outspent them 2/1 but now they’re outspending us. They’re spending it on a trans bigotry campaign – anti-abortion liars (they’re all liars) have seized on demonizing trans people as a way to get their unpopular and radical Right views across the finish line. I listen to the radio on my constant journey traversing the Great Lakes region so I heard both the MI anti trans ads in 2022 and now the OH anti trans ads. Identical.
I’m still optimistic. We have had quite a few people who are definitely not Democrats taking “NO on 1” signs. They’re voting against it because they think (correctly) that it’s a power grab by the far Right.
Brachiator
A question.
If you were a child in Germany in the 1940s, does this automatically make you a Nazi?
There are legitimate criticisms of these guys. But not this one.
Baud
@Brachiator:
If you were a child in Germany in the 1940s, and you become a Nazi, it’s a fair inference that your childhood exposure to Nazis influenced your development.
Baud
@Kay:
I guess Ohio would be a bigger loss for them than MI. 🤞
Kay
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Trump and political media still don’t really get it. It doesn’t matter if the NYTimes promotes a ridiculous First Amendment Trump defense or if Trump screams incoherently for the next months. It’s in a court now. It’s out of the bullshit forum and into a real one, with rules and standards. It’s too late for them to protect him.
They remind me of my successful small businessman acquaintance who got an OVI. He spent months ranting to me how it was unfair because, basically, people like him shouldn’t be subject to laws. Other people are worse criminals. I was thinking “um, that’s not a defense” and sure enough it wasn’t. He did 3 days and paid 2k in fines like everyone else.
Brachiator
@eversor:
Sorry to hear about your father.
Kay
@Baud:
I can’t wait to get out of here, honestly. Once I decide I really do move on rather quickly ( the upside of being shallow and easily distracted) and I’m mentally living in Michigan. I still have 1 year and 9 months of transitioning out of the law office, however and, well, my husband :)
Baud
ETA: Darth Alito disagrees.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Husbands, always getting in the way.
sab
@Kay: May I just say how very sorry I am to see you go? And if issue one passes I am outta here also.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh, good for her. Broke ranks with the ridiculous Secret Society. Whitehouse’s bill is really reasonable. It just holds them to the standard for other federal judges. Opposing it is indefensible.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I adore him. He is literally my favorite person. We met in a pool hall where I commented to a disreputable aquaintance “who is that asshole?” VERY romantic.
The Thin Black Duke
@eversor: I’m sorry, dude.
Baud
@Kay:
:-)
SFAW
@eversor:
Sorry about your father.
Barbara
@eversor: Wow. That’s pretty darn ghoulish of your extended relatives. I hope you can get your mom squared away with a minimum of ugliness. Condolences to you — your dad sounds like quite a guy, and even if his death is not a surprise I’m sure it will still leave a painful mark.
Princess
A white supremacist past, my foot. He learned how to hide his views from the normies for fun and profit. The South African trust babies, Vance etc all know where he stands and it’s a feature not a bug for them.
The Thin Black Duke
@Brachiator: I don’t believe that Brooks believes this bullshit. He’s a cynical opportunist who likes getting paid. What disgusts me are the educated sheep who take his bullshit seriously.
Kay
@sab:
My MI neighbors had a “meet and greet” for new people (not just me). I’m not really “new” in the sense that we have owned the house for 25 years but I was always in this kind of rushed summer vacation with kids mode and I always worked so I rarely stayed longer than 5 days or so at a time, so I barely know them. Nice people.
sab
@Kay: That is so much more romantic than when I met my husband, standing in line to vote against George Bush. I said I have my doubts about him but I don’t like Gore and I detest Lieberman. He said Bush is the Antichrist.
Prescient, very.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
We didn’t see them while they were “children of/during Apartheid,” but we do see them as racists/white supremacists/fascists/racist-supremacist-fascist-adjacents. That they happened to spend their youth there is merely a “coincidence,” I’m sure.
Manyakitty
@eversor: so sorry for your difficult days ahead. Sending wishes for peace.
Rusty
The slimey quality of Brooks is to complain about some issue, and then to make the left as the villians when it’s the conservatives that are making it worse. Children out of wedlock? Pre-Dobbs the teenage birth rate was falling, helped along by those leftist policies of six education and birth control. Post Dobbs there are already stories appearing of young women being forced to have children, of course out of wedlock. Its of course hard to swallow his swarmy morality that he only applies to others, for himself he is amazingly forgiving. Talk about someone well beyond their sell by date.
Kay
@Princess:
I think it’s true for the billionaires but not Vance (who really is a moron) and not for the people at Stanford or the University of Texas or the NYTimes or the WaPo. They’re just followers – rigidly conventional people who lean Right but pretend not to and thus are easily bullied and hoodwinked by the Right.
“Visiting scholar”. Jesus. THAT’S embarrassing, huh?
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
Brooks worked hard. He worked hard to develop insider connections and to use them as his entry into the world of the elites. From his Wikipedia biography:
Jay Gatsby could not have done it better.
Brooks acknowledged on one of his PBS segments that he is friends with the plutocrat who has helped Clarence Thomas. Brooks has apparently been working the oligarch circle for much of his professional career.
sab
@Kay: I still think that they think you have a funny accent. I moved to Grand Rapids after law school (chasing a guy) and everyone thought I talked funny. Seriously guys? I am from Ohio. We have the national standard for American accent.
SFAW
@sab:
Oh, SO close.
[Attempted joke about how some not-insignificant number of RWMFs considered Obama to be the Antichrist.]
Barbara
@Brachiator: ”Let’s take complicated cultural phenomena that we can reduce to inaccurate sound bites for $100, Alex.” The “meritocrats” are among the least likely to have children out of wedlock. I guess Brooks would like us to rain down judgment on those who do and their kids.
Kay
@sab:
I like poetry so at one point while we were still just friends he carried around a poetry book. Like Bill Clinton! What’s not to like about that?
SFAW
@sab:
Oh, bullshit. The “national standard American accent” is Brooklyn’s. Of course, there is still some disagreement re: whether it’s the Canarsie, Flatbush, or Sheepshead Bay accent.
eversor
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
He is/was. A literal rocket scientist. He once developed a jet pack in the 1960s and that got shit canned because it kept breaking peoples legs. Dad was a motercycle man, so he went out to a biker bar and dragged drunken bikers into a military base to prove it worked!
He forced a barrell rolling of an airplane (passenger jet), to prove it worked, as he thought that would be funny. Yet he by his own admission, liked to fly slow and straight as he was scared of planes (how that works I won’t know), but then rolled a relative over Niagra Falls just to cause a panic attack. He thought this was funny.
He arranged the theft of several dozen refrigerators to cool off the officers quarters in Korea. And then promptly helped establish, and then USMCJ defend, a small whore town. Including the shootings (nobody got dead).
Dad was a character, in ways both good and bad. His marriage with moms is going up on over 50 years and her panic over losing him is my main issue.
He’s been writing his memoirs for years. At one point he had the bonkers idea to become a priest so he could “preach” (more go get drunk) with the local retired generals old folks home.
He’s going to die in a mansion on a place with a golf course, private, club, pool, and more for rich fuckers and we have to get mom out of there. Oddly he hates pools, golf, and clubs… I know why he did it, but I still don’t know why.
At one point he snuck into Soviet Hungary to steal stuff back from the family home with a bonkers ass uncle of mine.
Dude was interesting. We used to do physics puzzles while eating chinese leek dumplings in Falls Church VA with Romney level people growing up and he’d ambush the waiters and insist he paid because it was rude not to pay off and on.
He’s a complex fucker. But if you wonder why you can barrel roll a jet passenger plane he did that, and was very much insistant on that. Though outside of “I wanted to scare people” we’ve never gotten the full story on it. And while I am one of those TS people, I’ll never know what he truly did. Though I doubt he gives a flying fuck now.
sab
@SFAW: Y’all are so provincial. Barely ever left your boroughs.
Princess
@Kay: I think those people hate trans people SO much that they don’t recognize how it’s not the motivator for most people that it is for them. Either people know and love some trans people and the demonization fails … or they don’t know any and therefore can’t be made to feel that the issue is so huge that it’s worth signing their own rights away for.
Good luck!!!
Kay
@sab:
People from Youngstown and environs do have an accent though, it’s just a western PA accent and southern Ohio is closer to Kentucky.
There’s a whole discussion about Whitmer’s accent:
I read a polisci analysis that suggested she would be a good national candidate because the upper midwest would “hear” themselves. I think there’s probably some truth to it.
Chief Oshkosh
@mrmoshpotato: Seconded. We visited Salzburg almost on a lark during a two-week business trip that was supposed to include only Munich and Berlin. Accidentally on our part, it was during the music festival. It was amazing.
Kay
@Princess:
It wasn’t a motivator in MI but OH is now much further Right than MI and David Brooks couldn’t be more wrong – there’s a huge amount of out and proud bigotry in Trump Country. He’s always lived in blue areas so he has the luxury of these stupid fucking theories. It may work here.
But I still think we will win :)
sab
Our new cat has a ringtail, like a husky. So hard to take her seriously as a black panther. Also, she meeps instead of a full meow.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Brooks seems to say that the evil elites wobbled on their pedestals, waved their godlike and undoubtedly white hands and let loose illegitimatacy among the unwashed masses. If only Brooks and his ilk had written suitably stern op-ed pieces, America might have been spared the shame of unwed mothers.
JPL
@eversor: I’m so sorry.
SFAW
@sab: I haven’t lived in the NYC area for 40-plus years, but the truth hurts. Maybe if you spent less time in diners, hoping to get interviewed by FTFTFNYT “reporters,” your worldview [sic] might change?
For what it’s worth — which ain’t much, I’ll admit — most people can’t discern my place of origin (so to speak) because I’m pretty accent-free, unless I choose to pretend I’m a Noo Yawkuh, or a Bostonian.
Please also note that the first paragraph was written with love, not venom (because you’re one of the commenters I like). Plus, at least you’re not a Cheesehead, like some lawyer(s) here.
sab
@Kay: My mom’s people were from Pennsylvania next to Ohio. Family joke was Mom couldn’t find Youngstown from Akron driving unless she started at Newcastle Pa and drove west.
Grandfather was from Newcastle. We still laugh about how they pronounced Uncle Bawb (Bob.)
Baud
@Brachiator:
White bred pundits are one alternative to free and widespread abortion access.
sab
@SFAW: My uncle’s wife was the loveliest person I ever met. She moved to Cleveland from Queens in her twenties and never lost her accent.
eversor
@JPL:
Don’t be. I’m not.
But it’s a loss of brain power and institutional know how that I don’t know how we will get back. Dad charged 1k an hour for consulting on technical issues. He aged out.
I’ts not a personal loss, that’s fine. I’ll bury him like I have many close relations, under cold white marble. As it should be.
They don’t make them like him anymore.
My wrath in this is reserved for people I haven’t heard from in decades now asking over the will. And as me, sister, brother, control that it’s not an issue, it’s just insulting.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Heh, I met my wife on a ridgewalk (looking for caves). I was very impressed with her, she kept up with me every step of the way, even when I told her, “I see something up there, I’m gonna go up and check it out. I’ll be right back.”
When we got back to camp that eve, folks around the fire asked her how her day went and who did she partner up with?
“Tom.”
“Oh… You poor girl…”
It was a year or 2 later when she finally admitted that the only reason she stuck so close to me is because she was terrified I would go off and leave her alone out there.
Princess
@Baud: if you made everyone read a BoBo op-Ed before they were allowed to have sex, no one would have sex again.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Kay:
Cincinnati is the northernmost suburb of Lexington and the westernmost suburb of Huntington….
Baud
@Princess:
That must be how the Shakers did it.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, that’s nice. I’m phobic about bats so I have trouble in caves. We took our youngest to a cave tour in Kentucky and I had to really control my impulse to drop to the ground every time I heard a flutter. Okay so it’s a state park and our guide, a state employee, told us his theory about how “Congress” had a plan in place to hide in caves come the Big Deep State War. I think these people dog me. I seem to encounter every variety of Right wing nut.
Nelle
@Baud: Fundamentalism, combined with zealots, dooms any tolerance or compromise, be it religious or political. I watched my branch of Mennonites grow more evangelical (and cross into political) first with dismay, then with increasing distance. Cross religion and politics, all with a certitude that only they have the truth and you create a fertile ground for corruption and conmen. As Israel is finding out, as we witness in Iowa government.
sab
@Kay: I love bats, but the rabies thing gives me pause. That was my favorite thing about my junior year in England. Those bats were safe.
OzarkHillbilly
So I guess seeing the bat flight out of Carlsbad Caverns is a “no go” for you? (It is a pretty damned impressive sight.)
Chris Johnson
@eversor: Was it the famous barrel roll of the 747? If so, I read about him in a book :)
Kay
@Nelle:
We have a large Mennonite-founded business here. It was sold in the last 20 years so it no longer has any religious ethos at all but they were very pro immigrant and pro refugee and actually pro worker. They were a good employer – solid wages and a very ample retirement plan. I think it’s sad they went far Right and abandoned all that, because they have abandoned all that here. They’re Trumpy as hell.
eversor
@Chris Johnson:
That would be dad.
different-church-lady
The problem is definitely not that David Brooks is smart.
sab
@Nelle: So true.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I can see that around our courthouse at dusk! I was once in a very tense mediation in a conference room at the courthouse and I spotted a bat (asleep) clinging to the wall. Okay, so I have to watch him in case he attacks. I noticed one of the litigants noticing ME watching and he made that “shudder” move – we shared that bond. My middle son will pick them up. He found a dead one in our cellar and he called me down to look at how small it was and that really did help. I had made them bigger.
Maxim
@eversor: I’m sorry about your dad. I hope you’re able to say whatever you need to in the time that’s left. Good on you and your siblings looking out for your mom.
Anne Laurie
@sab: Pockets of Ohio residents kept the Appalachian/Elizabethan pronunciation ‘wersh‘ (for wash) well into the 20th century.
Spousal Unit’s grandmother was Ohio-born, and he (born in the 1950s) still slips up occasionally on that word. And it is my job to tease him about it every damned time, of course.
Splitting Image
It’s sad how often DougJ has to say something like this. The NYT is better at his job than he is.
Maxim
@sab: A friend of mine years ago was named Dawn, and her father was Don. This was in California, but she was originally from … I do think it was Ohio. She had to explain that where she was from, Don and Dawn did not sound at all alike.
WereBear
@eversor: I’m sorry about the news. And yes, sometimes we gotta.
sab
@Kay: How many people are there in the upper midwest. Just a couple of million. Not many. And half of the rest of us are frantic misogynists.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I read a poem once where bats “replaced” birds in the night sky so that’s how I think of it – like a shift change :)
I don’t like the scary night shift, Ozark!
WereBear
What a sad Fate to be so late to the bobo brooks thread but all I need to do is find driftglasses archives and I have all the bRooks bashing I can handle
Trying out my new fire 7 tablet that I have set upvss a dedicated E. reader but it also has a rudimentary browser
OzarkHillbilly
Heh. On my jungle chops in Mexico, we’d sleep out in the open because a tent just wasn’t possible. Bats were flying around and about us all night long. We’d always kind of wondered how many of them were vampire bats, and if we’d wake up at the first cut, etc etc. None of us ever did get bit.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Regarding your aversion to bats, I’m sure it doesn’t help for decades, that Hollywood depicts bats as harbingers of VERY BAD THINGS.
Kay
@sab:
I was shocked at how many Right leaning Democratic white working class males really SHIT on Clinton using the most sexist framing imagineable. Right in front of me, so completely unaware of it. Just the water they swim in. I will not forget it.
EarthWindFire
@eversor: I’m so sorry you all have to deal with parasitic relatives on top on everything else. People suck. My thoughts are with you.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
I think it’s the silence and their kind of unerring accuracy in flying. Also? I think they carry viruses so I was a little crazy about keeping them away from my kids. I watched a nature show once where they described bats as “swarming” with viruses. OMG.
sab
@Kay: When I was first married we had bats in the house ( waste of money those dog rabies shots. Dogs think bats are cool.) Husband wanted to put house on the market next day. Amazingling I said no and we are still happily married.
Nukular Biskits
Mornin’, y’all!
Just read Zack Beauchamp’s evisceration of Bobo over at Vox. WTF keeps paying Brooks to crank out this shit?
Nelle
@Kay: Yes, some of the Mennonite groups collectively swarmed over there. My family was steadfastly in the “welcome the stranger, the immigrant” camp. My dad was a refugee from a village in Ukraine, so he felt a responsibility to pay it forward. He and Mom sponsored a family from Vietnam. Once they were on their feet enough, he sponsored another family from Cambodia. In both cases, the families initially lived with my parents in their small house. While I found I don’t share their theology, their values are still my best guide on how I choose to live my life.
Kay
@sab:
I’m kind of an expert on getting rid of them, so much so local people ask me. I have a guy! He’s a jerk of a person but for 2k he will get rid of your bats humanely. I even know the dates where you can legally exclude them- has to be before they have bat babies. I’ve had them in both the OH house and the MI house attics. We’re in the Bat Belt (I made up that phrase).
rikyrah
Tyler Perry (@tylerperry) tweeted at 9:11 PM on Fri, Aug 04, 2023:
This photo was taken at my house. I bought these chairs from an auction because they belonged to Abraham Lincoln. We both sat in them and had a conversation. I wondered when he freed the slaves could he have imagined that one day a descendant of those slaves would become President of the United States. Only in our America, with all of her flaws.
Happy Birthday to you, President Obama.
https://t.co/JKp1iipnQO
(https://twitter.com/tylerperry/status/1687647409055100928?s=02)
SFAW
@sab:
Originally from Long Island (near Queens), came to Boston area for college.
Never noticed my father’s mild-to-moderate NYC accent (he was born in Manhattan) until I went home for vacation during freshman year.
Once in awhile, I would try to get people to guess my hometown area, based on my “accent.” No one ever did. [When they found out I was from LI, they’d say “oh, Lawng Guyland? (har har)?” It was usually someone from Bahston, whereupon I’d note that the only ones who said it that way were from Mass or Joisey. They didn’t like being classed with NJ, for some reason.]
brantl
David Brooks; world-class rhetorical flatulence.
Eyeroller
@Kay:
Bats have an astonishingly good immune system that keeps viruses in check–but that may be why they’re a reservoir for many viral diseases. They also have a long lifespan for their body size, compared to the norm for mammals, and cancer is uncommon in them, possibly also a consequence of that immune system.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: I visited Alabaster Caves State Park in northwest Oklahoma and picked up a “Bats Need Friends” bumper sticker.
Oklahoma has a lot of nice state parks. I camped at Osage Hills State Park olthe night after I visited Slsbaster Caves. I drove east the next day, and picked up a bunch of pecans at a road side stand near Vinita and took them back to Virginia.
Kay
@Nelle:
They had sponsored for decades here. Mexican immigrants and Laotian refugees. We have a small but thriving Laotian community here as a result of them. They were like pro immigrant business speakers to Right wingers. The younger generations are just ordinary wingers now. Shame. We need them as advocates now more than ever.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Not to pick nits with Tyler Perry, but I’m guessing that President Obama is not actually descended from slaves.
He still makes a good point, but …
sab
@Kay: My sister in law does Weight Watchers, and after the 2016 election she just went nuts. Some guy made a snide anti Hillary comment and she went ballistic.
I haven’t talked to my brother since 2016, and neither has my younger sister. Our older sister does not understand what the problem is. She thinks he is a nice guy.
People are who they say they are. Family or not.
Kay
@Eyeroller:
I have this primal thing where I’m “the monster is in the babys room!” It’s nuts, I know. All out of proportion to the threat.
OzarkHillbilly
Yeah, they do, I’ve been to a couple. Need to go to more.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: Hey now, I didn’t go there…
I read a few comments at the tweet and the very first one made this point.
WereBear
@Kay: I am aware. It’s always a bit shocking, still.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Great. So now I’m no better than your usual tweeter commenter. Shit.
sab
When I lived in Grand Rapids MI my house at night was like OHare airport with bats. One time a bat climbed out of my bathrobe when I was taking a shower. I shrieked like a banshee, and my dogs said it’s just a bat.
Suzanne
@eversor: Wow, I’m so sorry. Best wishes for your dad, and you, for good resolution and a peaceful transition. Your dad sounds like an incredible person.
And fffffffff your shitty family members.
Suzanne
@SFAW:
I seem to recall hearing that one of his white grandparents was indeed descended from a slave, maybe even one of the first ones?! I heard this so long ago that I literally don’t remember where I heard it.
SFAW
@Kay:
Good thing your weren’t at Chez SFAW two nights ago. Somehow, a small bat got into our house. (Mrs SFAW was pretty freaked by it.) I tried to lure it out before our cats got it. Didn’t see it for a couple of hours, assumed it had flown out the door (and I hadn’t noticed). Then went into the family room, saw two of the cats staring intently at one of our otherwise-uninteresting walls, and saw it hanging from a string of lights. Put on some gloves, grabbed it (as gently as I could) and brought it outside.It made some kind of chittering/whining sound when I was carrying it; I hope it was fear, and not that I had hurt it. Interesting experience (for me), though.
MomSense
Trump is the biggest asshole at the country club. He appeals to all the other assholes and aspiring assholes at the country club. They’re racist and think all the problems of the world are simple and they could fix them all in two seconds. They don’t know how spectacularly ignorant and superficial they are. They all think they achieved everything on their own, starter wives, inheritance, teachers, generations of investment in education and infrastructure are ignored.Trump did figure out how to weaponize racism, prejudice, resentment, misogyny to millions of others BECAUSE the Republican Party has been nurturing those resentments, racism, prejudice, misogyny, and cruelty for decades.
I am sick to the fucking back teeth with Bobo’s masturbatory musings on morality. He’s obsessed with the topic because he’s a bad person and his actions don’t sync with the image he has constructed of himself.
Bobo you are an asshole. There is nothing special about you. The world was set up to reward white male faux humble shits like you. Shut up already and either enjoy your unearned spoils or do something decent with you life in private. Whatever you decide, just jeep it to your damned self.
SFAW
@Suzanne:
Never heard that before.
Great, now I really AM as bad as a typical tweeter commenter.
Suzanne
As for Brooks….. feh. I have no doubt that some of the resentment he’s describing is real. (I have noted that, since moving to the Northeast, I seem to encounter more people in a professional context who mention where they went to college at times where it is clearly weird. Like, who cares where you went to college? Oh, you want me to know this for some reason.)
But, like, who gives a shit?! People are terrible in a whole tapestry of ways. Being bougie and try-hard-y is annoying, but it sure isn’t like being racist or hateful or criminal. And the Party of Personal Responsibility seems really quick to want to blame the uppity liberals for their defects and their self-imposed misery.
JMG
@Kay: Bats eat mosquitos. I believe they are that horrible pest’s only natural predators. A deadly fungus wiped out nearly all the bats here in New England over a decade ago. Too bad. I’d rather have them fluttering around than mosquitoes. As far as disease carrying goes, there’s no comparison.
sab
@Anne Laurie: We have our linguistic tics. We don’t feed the cat because it needs to be fed. We feed the cat because it needs fed. I do that all the time and it drives nonlocals insane. “That isn’t even English! ” No, but it is Ohioan.
Suzanne
@SFAW: Your comment made me curious. Genealogy is fascinating.
Genealogists Say Obama Likely A Descendant Of First American Slave
sab
@Suzanne: Seriously? His Black side was from Kenya, right off the boat
ETA OK now I see it. Most white Americans might be Black. I can believe that for older American lines. Mine included. If your people owned slaves. Very plausible. We should make this normal. Unless Black Americans have a problem with it.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: Heh, that’s one way of looking at it.
Suzanne
@sab: Seriously. Apparently his slave descent comes through his mother’s side.
OzarkHillbilly
Dragonflies too, tho I think it is the nymphs they eat.
White Nose Syndrome. Not all the bats, just way too many. WNS is still a problem for them.
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne: Also, it’s not like Black People (and other minority groups) don’t do this kind of boasting too, while their peers roll their eyes. But what their peers don’t do is use it as a justification for supporting Fascism.
UncleEbeneezer
Republicans LOVE tho brag about all the ways they are special and so much better than everyone else:
• Descended from Pilgrims
• Self-Made/Small Business Owner
• Military Family
• Farmers
• From A SMALL Town
• Can Fix A Carburator
• Good At Math
• Know The Diff Between A Magazine and A Clip
• Extensive Knowledge of Hunting, Camping, WW2/CW History Etc.
And they will talk your goddamn ear off about it. But it never makes me say “Well gosh, they make me feel bad so I have no choice but to vote for Fascists”
Josie
@Kay:
If you can get a copy of Shirley Jackson’s Live Among the Savages you would enjoy the chapter which describes the night a bat got in the house. I have read it so many times and still laugh out loud when I do.
sab
@Anne Laurie: My husband pronounces roof and root weirdly. His brothers also. His sisters don’t. I find the gender difference interesting. Boys say ruuf. Girls say roof.
sab
@Suzanne: See me @ 151.
Suzanne
@UncleEbeneezer:
Exactly.
Like, I want to note that I think Brooks is really good at vividly describing a cohort of people that I probably belong to, and who are indeed irritating. But, again, who gives a shit?! If he’s accurate, and there’s another cohort of people who are supporting Trump because they hate bougie douchebags so much, those people are really really shitty and I don’t want to enter into any sort of electoral coalition with them. Not just coalition, I don’t want to live near them or talk to them or have their kids play with my kids.
(Temper your judgment of me with the knowledge that I don’t really want to talk to anybody anymore.)
sab
@Anne Laurie: I have many friends who moved to Warshington DC.
ETA Also too they continue to warsh their clothes and warsh their dishes, even here in Ohio. But we think that is more Indiana usage.
Suzanne
@UncleEbeneezer: Don’t forget:
Graduate of the School of Hard Knocks
Can Win A Physical Fight
Has A Bigger Truck
Has A Bigger TV
Golfs A Lot
Blonder Wife
Kay
@Josie:
Oh, thank you. I will. People bring me their bat stories. We have a new-ish Zoomer assistant at the law office and she was at her BF’s house, waiting for him out in the driveway under a motion detector light so the light switched on – super bright! – and then a bat actually flew into her hair. So that happens!
Someone once sent me video of a bat flying around a Wal Mart and everyone diving for cover. Maybe it will be like that immersion in the scary thing to conquer the phobia therapy.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I heard that too.
Josie
@Kay: I mistyped. Its Life, not Live.
sab
@sab: I had no idea that the wersh thing was Appalachian. I thought it was Indiana for some weird reason.
Quiltingfool
@Kay: I was a seasonal naturalist for Mo Dept of Natural Resources and worked as a “tour guide” at Ozark Caverns. A bat would skim over my head at a certain point in the cave (I was first in line!) and that would be the only bat to do that, no others. One of our other workers who studied bats said that after a bat made “contact” with something in the cave, that bat would let the other bats know what to avoid. Bats don’t really want to mess with humans.
Didn’t mind the bats…now, copperheads in the cave were a whole different story. They liked hanging out at the front of the cave, fortunately copperheads aren’t aggressive unless you are in their grid square, lol!
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne: I get it. We have friends in the museum world and nobody loves to show-off their intellect and education as obnoxiously as them. They drive me nuts sometimes. But I never consider becoming a Nazi because of it!
Tenar Arha
@eversor: sorry about your father. (also that sounds delicious)
pluky
@JMG: bats, swifts, swallows, and dragonflies. Dragonflies are the best since they prey on mosquitoes both as adults and larvae.
SFAW
@UncleEbeneezer:
If not because of that, why DID you consider becoming a Nazi? Or is that not what you meant?
Jim Appleton
Since the term comes up in this thread, Kevin Drum (who I used to admire greatly) proposes “fascism” needs to be retired in discussing current politics.
He has a point insofar as the original fascists favored outcomes which only partially apply today, mainly to do with details of economic nationalism back then versus a range of social and authoritarian extremes which clearly overlap over time.
That points, I think, to a core concept that the original fascists were “far-right radicals” (possibly the replacement term Kevin seeks) as are today’s far-right radicals, the difference is context.
In both instances the underlying goal is power trumps democracy. Today, though, trumpist loons (also a possible replacement term) are less ideologically coherent than original fascists (clear from haberdashery, too) and too affected by a mess of current issues (white/Christian nationalism 2023, Reagan/Gingrich pollution of our elected system, population and climate pressures … which, without conscience, define the narrative down for creeps like BoBo who strain) for one-to-one comparison.
But fascism is still fine in my view to describe the fascist fucks who don’t care what they’re doing.
Geminid
@sab: Might be the accent of what has been called “Butternut Country-” much of Kentucky, and southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and parts of Missouri. Some historian named the area because its early 19th century residents dyed their clothing with material from butternuts, related to walnuts.
My family lived in Dayton, Ohio for a few years in the 1960s and I remember how other kids would say “warsh.”
pat
I just got here and haven’t read any comments yet, but after reading about the Hoste nut, my jaw is still on the floor.
How clueless do you have to be to repeat nazi shit today? And he wrote a book?
I think I have to go for a walk now, try to clear my head.
S Cerevisiae
@JMG: dragonflies and birds like martins and swallows also eat mosquitoes.
Subsole
@eversor:
Sorry to hear about your dad. Hope you find some peace.
jimmiraybob
@Jim Appleton:
“He has a point insofar as the original fascists favored outcomes which only partially apply today, …”
The commonality is that the outcome that they (the “original fascists” and today’s authoritarian, proto-fascists) desired/desire was/is a closed ethno-state with absolute subservience to the state and the state leader. The desire was/is a closed state/society that would/will crush diversity, equity and inclusion. The “original” and the modern employ the same rhetoric and tactics.
Lots of sameness going on.
Bill Arnold
@dm:
I’m increasingly annoyed by many of the arguments around AI and current large language models in particular, including those of Emily Bender (caveat: those of hers that I’ve read).
Many of the arguments are apparently rooted (as in unstated priors) in badly-constructed theories of mind, and largely dismissive of vast (and potentially much vaster) diversity in mental schemas. (e.g. I’ve been told that people who think non-verbally for long stretches of time do not exist. When I say otherwise, I am accused, by those with a continuous linear internal monologue, of lying, or (this is rich) of not being aware of the structure of my own thinking.)
Anyway, largely moot at the moment because LLMs do not currently have sufficient complexity (and the wrong design, really), but that is a point of time in a technological race.
While poking around for popular press material, found this, linked already on this site a few times, which is sprawling, engaging (and sometimes infuriating):
You Are Not a Parrot And a chatbot is not a human. And a linguist named Emily M. Bender is very worried what will happen when we forget this. (MAR. 1, 2023, Elizabeth Weil)
sab
@Geminid: Bingo and bulleye. That is what it is.
JAFD
@eversor: Sending you coping energy and good thoughts. Tell your father I wish I’d met him, and I’m sure there will be a welcoming parade for him on the Other Side*. Time spent with your parents before their last journey is something you will never regret.
Is ‘one of those mornings’ – discovered I’d swallowed my bedtime pills instead of morning pills. Have to get prescript refills and groceries today.
Sometime in next couple of days, have to spend day with thin cyanoacrylate, thick cyanoacrylate, slow-cure epoxy, and lots of itty itty bitty parts to connect. Wish me luck.
Hope all of you have great happy summer weekend to remember !
*I had a heart attack in ’18, taken to catheter lab so they could put it aux pump, heart stopped twice, shocked back into operation …
RSA
At the tail end of a dead thread, I’ll add that I just visited the Web page of the University of Texas Salem Center through the wayback machine, where Richard Hanania has a place on the Fellows and Scholars page, as of late May 29.
Today, though? That same section reads,
They should be ashamed.
Villago Delenda Est
Someday David Brooks’ broken, exsanguinated body will be found in some midtown back alley and I will dance.
Dan B
@Brachiator: One of my cheap thrills is having Brooks on PBS News hour with Johnathan Capehart, black, openly gay, whipsmart takes down Brooks without breaking a sweat. Yee Haw!
J R in WV
@Kay:
@S Cerevisiae:
I suspect hummingbirds predate on mosquitoes in a big way. They love nectar, but need their meat also.
Dan B
@Princess: BoBo op-ed, better than aspirin*.
*between the knees.
Captain C
I am perfectly willing to concede that Brooks and his fellow elitist Klan-whisperers are the bad guys. Anti-TFGers, not so much.
Kayla Rudbek
@eversor: I’m sorry to hear that. It sounds like he’s a character and a half and you’re going to miss him a lot.