There’s only one thing, really, to talk about up top today: I’m doing an appearance on a local radio show this morning — one of those three-journos-crack-wise-about-the-week’s-events deals — but today we have a unusual third: Gilbert Gottfried. At least, he’s booked. Who knows if he’ll show up?
If you’re interested, you can listen live here. It’s around 10:40 or so, I believe, but I’ll be getting there around 10:30. If you miss it, there will surely be a podcast somewhere.
We will not be doing the aristocrats joke. It’s public radio, after all.
Otherwise, I’d talk about that live “Sound of Music” thing, but I fear I’ve been struck dumb.
For the rest of you stuck living in the frigid west, upper Midwest and elsewhere in the cold front, stay warm. I have the weekend ahead.
Dexter said on December 6, 2013 at 2:10 am
Gilbert Fucking Gottfried. One funny dude.
Madiba has passed; one memory I have is of the Detroit UAW locals getting together with the UAW International on Jefferson and holding a Welcome Nelson Mandela to Detroit event at Tiger Stadium…must have been early 1995 or so…Mandela accepted a union jacket and cap and wore it to screaming throngs of Detroiters. I wasn’t there but The News and The Freep went nuts with coverage, full page spreads, magnificent event.
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Deborah said on December 6, 2013 at 2:50 am
So it’s you, Gottfried and who’s the other person?
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Brandon said on December 6, 2013 at 3:27 am
It was a decent version. The Julie Andrews movie will never be displaced, but Carrie Underwood and Audra McDonald were great.
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alex said on December 6, 2013 at 4:47 am
I miss the old Gilbert Gottfried Aflac duck. The new ones just don’t sound right. So what was it he did, anyway? Offend Sarah Palin or something?
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Deggjr said on December 6, 2013 at 6:59 am
I liked the ‘Sound of Music’ even though I was prepared not too. The music had only minor changes and the children seemed more like children.
This might be Gilbert Gottfried’s greatest line (from Aladdin): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxlhyX-4qKI
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linda said on December 6, 2013 at 7:20 am
Deggjr: Last night’s version was based on the Broadway play, which they said was done to avoid direct comparisons with the movie. Missed it. I just don’t remember TV stuff even when I mean to.
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Connie said on December 6, 2013 at 7:33 am
I only watched the first hour, but was disappointed. The nuns singing was covered up by the too loud orchestra. The scenery was brown. And Carrie’s voice is nowhere near Julie andrews’. And while I realize we live in multi-ethnic society, having black and asian nuns in Austria in the 1930s just wasn’t very realistic. I will watch the rest this weekend.
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Danny said on December 6, 2013 at 8:03 am
Alex, I couldn’t remember either, but I think he offended his employer. Just did a quick search revealed he tweeted a few jokes right after the Japanese tsunami. A sample:
“Japan called me. They said ‘maybe those jokes are a hit in the U.S., but over here, they’re all sinking.'”
“I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said ‘is there a school in this area.’ She said ‘not now, but just wait.'”
Apparently AFLAC Japan was not pleased.
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nancy said on December 6, 2013 at 8:08 am
The third panelist is Nancy Kaffer from the Free Press. So, two Nancys and Gilbert. What do you call that act? The Aristocrats!
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nancy said on December 6, 2013 at 8:09 am
I found Carrie Underwood’s flat American speaking voice jarring, especially in comparison to all those classically trained actors with their classically trained diction.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 6, 2013 at 8:17 am
The problem with using the stage version of “Sound of Music” is that many of us have multiple high school renditions to compare to in our memories, and they are often, in places, quite good.
I thought it was . . . nice. We watched the “Making of” feature last week at my wife’s folks (they get b’cast only in Indy, no cable for them, bless ’em), and at the end I said to Joyce “they’d better be careful that all this care and quality in the casting of Liesl and Kurt doesn’t end up making Carrie Underwood look worse than she might otherwise.” And while she has great pipes, she’s not as good an actor as teens who’ve been on stage in dozens of shows, or a Kurt from Carneige Mellon and Liesl from Manhattan Marymount (if I recall correctly). I’ve seen two or three Maria’s who were better actors in HS productions.
The audio was startlingly terrible; I tweeted during the show that NBC must have subcontracted the audio to the same tech company handling Healthcare.gov. Yes, it was live; SNL never has problems like this, and it’s the same network, so . . . ?
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2013 at 8:36 am
We dvr’ed the live show, and watched the news pundits discussing Nelson Mandella…but we’re looking forward to watching it this weekend.
So anyway, I hope the Proprietress has a good time in “the mainstream MEEdee-uh” – which seems to be a term that angry rightwing media-types (especially on the radio) hurl at any other person in the media who disagrees with them. (which implies that being an ‘outlier’ is a virtue)
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2013 at 8:40 am
Pam and I watch the Voice, and we’ve noticed this season that NBC’s audio mixer people have average nights and then horrible nights; although their lighting, staging-f/x people KILL IT every time!
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alex said on December 6, 2013 at 8:57 am
Here’s Lemon-Face again calling others’ views “inane” while utterly oblivious to the inanity of his own:
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20131205/NEWS/131209844/0/FRONTPAGE
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2013 at 9:17 am
Good God, Alex!
“utterly oblivious” is an extremely generous take on today’s steaming load of that guy’s tripe.
Although to be honest, I didn’t make it past half-way in his self-contradictory mutterings and throat-clearings, before hitting eject.
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Peter said on December 6, 2013 at 9:41 am
Connie, I had to agree with you – Mother Superior a schwartze? Oy Himmel!
I watched bits and pieces, and I thought it was pretty good, although I have to admit that I was watching it out of anticipating someone blowing a line or a note. But who thought of that outfit for Maria? OK, so you don’t want an exact match to Julie Andrews, but she looked like Oma trying to rock it young style.
I’m going to have to check Lorenzo on this one…
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Jolene said on December 6, 2013 at 10:43 am
As always, Ta-Nehisi Coates has some smart things to say on the passing of Nelson Mandela.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/apartheids-useful-idiots/282114/
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Deborah said on December 6, 2013 at 10:48 am
I’ve been listening to WDET for about 45 minutes now waiting to hear Nancy. It’s actually been a good program.
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Dorothy said on December 6, 2013 at 10:55 am
TSOM was okay, it was pleasant, but Carrie’s deficiencies as an actress were very apparent. Her singing was lovely though. The little kids were what made it fun for me. I couldn’t get enough of them. Although the actress playing Louisa was badly in need of having her ends trimmed. I know – nitpicky of me. Connie I said the same thing about all the black nuns – I understand the concept of color blind casting but that was ridiculous since it’s supposed to be taking place in WWII Austria! And the Captain had a British accent but the kids didn’t…again, sort of difficult to not find fault with that. The guy who played Max Detweiler is also from Pittsburgh – went to Shadyside Academy. I recognized him from when I tried to like SMASH on NBC. His singing voice was very good.
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Jolene said on December 6, 2013 at 10:56 am
More on Mandela: This is Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who interviewed him many times, speaking about him on the PBS NewsHour last night. I thought this was a great piece. I’m sure it was prepared in advance, as newspaper obits of the greats are.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/12/nelson-mandela.html
Hunter-Gault, as you may know, is among the greats of the U.S. civil rights era, having been, in 1961, one of the first two African-American students to enter the University of Georgia.
PBS also has a link to a FRONTLINE report on Mandela. Haven’t watched this yet, but am planning to check it out later today or on the weekend.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 6, 2013 at 11:02 am
I’m having trouble with listening to Nancy in conversation with Gottfried. It feels like a fever dream. They’re on to drone delivery of shoes and pizzas now, having moved past “Sound of Music.”
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Deborah said on December 6, 2013 at 11:10 am
Yay Nancy, you did great! I heard all but the last minute. My iPad crapped out on me, at least it didn’t happen earlier. The other Nancy’s voice (the Alabamian) was a little too soft and I had to hold my device up to my ear to hear her, even though I had the volume cranked up full force. I should have used my earphones.
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2013 at 11:11 am
Jolene, thanks for the link to the Coates article on Mandela; it was superb. And indeed, the bit about 1960’s WFB and “anti-colonialism” leaped right off the page, and reminded me of why a guy like Newt Gingerich was such an anachronistic abomination….
or at least, I HOPE he was an anachronism, moreso than an insufficiently polished new-style racist
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 6, 2013 at 11:11 am
Nancy, you all got lucky when the host turned the conversation to “selfies.” I’m sure Gilbert had more thoughts than he voiced.
It’s over now; we’ll see if an archive link goes up later (and one should).
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Dorothy said on December 6, 2013 at 11:33 am
I heard about 3 minutes of it and then I got email bombardment from the relo company asking for a copy of our SIGNED HUD statement. Which I’m pretty sure we already sent them twice. So I had to take care of that. It was worth it – we’ll be reimbursed a pretty penny, which is earmarked for paying off our tractor and new refrigerator. You sounded great, though, in what I heard! Gilbert would drive me nuts! But he’s fabulous.
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Jolene said on December 6, 2013 at 11:42 am
Tractor? You have a tractor, Dorothy?
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Deborah said on December 6, 2013 at 12:01 pm
I have to admit that when Nancy first mentioned Gottfried in her post I didn’t know who he was and had to Google him, then I vaguely remembered him from SNL.
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nancy said on December 6, 2013 at 12:17 pm
For all of you who care: Gottfried is like all famous people — shorter and slighter than you think. Also totally quiet and calm until he’s in front of a microphone, and then it’s like the switch is thrown.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 6, 2013 at 12:19 pm
And his civilian voice?
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nancy said on December 6, 2013 at 12:26 pm
The same, but far closer to normal. You probably wouldn’t notice it in casual conversation.
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beb said on December 6, 2013 at 12:54 pm
When you say Gilbert Gottfried is shorter and thinner in real life, you’re talking about a man who appears on television as a short, skinny guy. How much shorter can he get?
Nelson Mandala has joined the ages. Like Ghandi and Martin Luther King, he changed the course of civilization without starting a bloody civil war. The last few months of his life had to hard for him, endless sickness, hospitalization. His death was a mercy.
And yet there are some people whose animus is so strong that they can’t stop themselves. Lawyers, Guns and Money had a post yesterday, short hours after Mandala’s death was announced, of the bitter, mean-spirited, occasionally racist things people had to say on Glenn Beck’s web site. Camus was right, hell is people.
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James said on December 6, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Rebecca and I watched most of “Sound of Music – Live!” (Look for #SOML on twitter, and ignore the “story of my life” nonsense).
Here’s my take:
I was struck by how awful the production was. The costume design was all over the place, chronologically, and everything looked ill-tailored (Rolf’s shorts were a particularly egregious example). Even the nun’s wimples looked fake, like they’d never seen a nun in real life. The audio had a distinct undertone of air-conditioning during the many awkward silences. And the direction – clumsy and unprofessional.
I kept thinking: have the television arts fallen so low? How did we lose the skill to put on a live musical event?
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Jolene said on December 6, 2013 at 1:31 pm
beb, I heard, too, that people on conservative web sites and Facebook pages (National Review, Daily Caller, the Blaze) were saying terrible things about Mandela, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read any if it. My God, how horrible can people be?
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Dorothy said on December 6, 2013 at 1:59 pm
HAD a tractor. It was sold along with the house we just left. We had three acres. A tractor was de rigueur! I’m going to miss her so much. I was the primary operator when it came to cutting the grass.
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2013 at 2:14 pm
I popped to Fox News a time or three last night, during commericals on msnbc’s continuing coverage of Mandella’s passing, and I was struck by the absolute silence from that quarter.
They were busy attacking “the lies” regaring ACA each time I popped in there….which I suppose is something like a concession to the largeness of the man who passed away
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Judybusy said on December 6, 2013 at 2:15 pm
Jolene, thanks for the Coates article. Sobering history.
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Brandon said on December 6, 2013 at 2:32 pm
@brian: I did likewise. Rachel Maddow started her show with a discussion of the law requiring blacks to carry passbooks everywhere they went. She later had an interview with Ron Dellums, who endeavored for fifteen years to divest from South Africa. Over on The Kelly File, Megyn Kelly was grumbling about Obamacare. Her voice is very hoarse and husky, by the way. Checked out The O’Reilly Factor: He was interviewing Rick Santorum about his movie The Christmas Candle. They mentioned Mandela, and really emphasized his forgiveness, etc. In general, the right will publicly clasp him to their bosom, as they do for MLK, as an icon of peace, etc. but ignore everything else. A few diehards will continue to call Mandela a communist and terrorist.
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brian stouder said on December 6, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Over on The Kelly File, Megyn Kelly was grumbling about Obamacare
The pretty blonde*, yes? She sounded terrible!
I remember wondering why she didn’t take the night off; and in fact, I think I saw her croaking on another show (maybe shit-for-brains Sean?) about all the “willful lies” from the Obama administration about the ACA, etc etc.
She should have stayed home
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Brandon said on December 6, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Brian, maybe she has a cold or something.
From Media Matters, “Conservative Reactions to Mandela’s Death.”
http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2013/12/06/a-comprehensive-guide-to-conservative-reactions/197185
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Prospero said on December 6, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Aflac duck bit the dust for me when the chubs lady said he worked his tail off and the other chubs lady didn’t t say it would grow right back How coulld they fuck that up? Guy’s a LizARD.
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Bitter Scribe said on December 6, 2013 at 3:39 pm
A few diehards will continue to call Mandela a communist and terrorist.
More than a few, judging by these reactions to the brief encomium on Ted Cruz’s Facebook page.
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Jeff Borden said on December 6, 2013 at 3:58 pm
Nothing surprising about the commentary by our cousins on the looney right. It must be a matter of ideological pride to be on the wrong side of every single historical movement.
We do live in a time of pygmies. People like Ted Cruz, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, et.al. required a seven-foot ladder just to reach Mandela’s heel. And yet Ricky Santorum dares to compare himself with Mandela for his stance against Obamacare.
Dan Savage was too nice to Santorum.
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James said on December 6, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Not to speak ill of the dead, but the BBC just reported that the S.A. Communist party said Mandela was a high ranking member in good standing.
Heck, I’d be a commie if I were in his shoes. Better than an Apartheidist.
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alex said on December 6, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Just goes to show: Pander to neo-Confederates and the like for their votes and they’ll be lying in wait for you to cross them:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/republicans-who-lost-their-r-card-for-praising-mandela
I bet not a one of these greasy pols has the balls to rebuke and disown the haters. In fact, I’d lay money on it that these cowardly weasels are going to start equivocating and backpedaling if they haven’t already.
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Deborah said on December 6, 2013 at 6:06 pm
Truly, what is the matter with people (regarding Mandela haters), it boggles my mind how insensitive and just plain wrong people can be. Shame, shame, shame.
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Dexter said on December 6, 2013 at 6:21 pm
I was way off in my remembrance; it was 1990 when Madiba came to Detroit.
http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2013/12/06/Local-residents-recall-leader-s-visit-to-Detroit.html
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Connie said on December 6, 2013 at 6:49 pm
Jack Lessenbery on Michigan Radio talked about that trip to Detroit today. He filled Tiger Stadium. And downtowners were surprised and pleased to see him jogging the next morning.
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Prospero said on December 6, 2013 at 6:50 pm
One very powerful man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgcTvoWjZJU
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Prospero said on December 6, 2013 at 8:51 pm
The gunman lived three miles from the victim and didn’t know him? Bullshit. And Nelson Mandela was diametrically opposed to allowing hatred to take over one’s life.
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Basset said on December 6, 2013 at 11:02 pm
Pros, as much as you seem to love proclaiming “bullshit” because something doesn’t suit you in some way, I’m afraid that not knowing your neighbor is the norm in quite a few places. I could quite literally throw a rock from our suburban tract-house front steps to at least two homes of total strangers, and I had a considerably below-average arm in my ball-playing days.
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Prospero said on December 6, 2013 at 11:14 pm
So that was an ecuse to shool the guy. There was apparently a tangled history, and the shooter knew the guy he shot. They had both had sex with the same woman. Hence the shooting.
The history of American conservatives with Nelson Mandela. Well he was melanin-challenged and anti-colonial. And as Ron Raygun once famously said “Why who even knew there were black people?”
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Prospero said on December 7, 2013 at 12:06 am
One way or another Bassetl
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David C. said on December 7, 2013 at 6:39 am
I have an uncle who visited Apartheid era South Africa. He was a huge fan of Buckley, so you won’t be surprised that he came back full of stories of how good Apartheid was. Why, he said, he never met a black while he was there who had anything bad to say about P.W. I suspect the blacks he met are like the cab drivers that Bobo Brooks and Friedman meet. The cab drivers aren’t exactly figments of their imaginations, but whatever they say gets filtered in their magnificently warped brains to come out exactly as they need it to. I haven’t seen my Uncle Tom since he got back from a trip to Israel. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Tom never met a Palestinian who had anything bad to say about Bibi.
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nancy said on December 7, 2013 at 8:42 am
An editor at the Columbus Dispatch accepted a junket from the SA government in the early ’80s, to mark the opening of yet another “homeland,” the name of which I can’t find now. All the stories were written before he left. I know because I found them in a secret queue in the computer system when I was bored one day.
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Jolene said on December 7, 2013 at 9:24 am
The NYT has a small gallery of front pages announcing Mandela’s death. Some of them are very impressive–both photos and artwork. Was hard to pick a favorite.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/06/world/africa/frontpages-mandela.html?ref=africa&_r=0#1
Also, i watched the Frontline show that I linked to above last night, and it is fascinating. Lots of history, lots of interviews with people who knew Mandela–some of whom were imprisoned with him, lots of insight about struggles within the ANC as essentially powerless people tried to figure out how to fight against the apartheid regime.
Have pasted the link in again below. I was able to stream it on my TV rather than watching it on a computer. There’s a PBS app available through Roku and, I suspect, on other video streaming services as well. Amazon’s video service definitely Frontline. I didn’t click through to find that episode, but I imagine it’s there.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mandela/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=
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brian stouder said on December 7, 2013 at 10:06 am
After watching Ms Maddow’s segment on the history of apartheid laws in South Africa, our 15 year old, who loves the Hunger Games books, commented on the similarity of Ms Collins’ dystopian fiction and South African history.
So, bonus points to the subversive Ms Collins!
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Prospero said on December 7, 2013 at 10:35 am
R. Kelly lyrics read by Benjamin Cumberbatch. Pretty funny.
Mandela said “Poverty is not an accident. Like slavvery and apharteid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.” That is exactly why the conservatives dislike the man so much. They believe people choose to live in poverty because they are just lazy. Takers not makers. That is the conservative view of the universe. The 47%. Not like those rugged individualists that get those government checks directly from the Alawskan Permanent Fund, about a $grand annually, per capita. That’s why the minimum wage is a measly $7.25/hr. and why CEOs make 300 times what the people that work for them make. That discre[ancy is unconscionable. If minimum wage just kept pace with the Big Bossmen’s salaries it would be about $22/hr. In my last job, working for a big time architectural firm, they billed my time at $90/hr. They were paying me bout $20 per hour. Now I’m charging $80/hr and work when I feel like it.
As far as South Africa is concerned, I’m with Miami Steve on that. And his second season on Lillyhamer starts next Wednesday. Great TeeVee show, on Netflix.
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Kirk said on December 7, 2013 at 10:54 am
Nancy @ 54: It was Venda. I found those stories, too.
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Prospero said on December 7, 2013 at 11:47 am
Julie Barnes’ and Quincy Jones’ daughter is fed up with the pop tarts.
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David C. said on December 7, 2013 at 1:01 pm
Oh, those pop tarts. I thought you meant the ones that are only good for shingling your roof.
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Basset said on December 7, 2013 at 1:25 pm
Another right-angle turn… today is the birthday of one of my deceased brothers, he would have been 49. He used to drink kamikazes with his buds to observe the Pearl Harbor Day connection… thought I’d try that myself and they actually sound pretty tasty, equal parts of vodka, triple sec, and lime juice. I had no idea.
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Jolene said on December 7, 2013 at 1:28 pm
At the risk of being tiresome on this topic, here is Mandela’s NYT obituary, written by Bill Keller. It’s a great piece of writing–comprehensive and nuanced. A great history lesson and a great portrait of the man.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/world/africa/nelson-mandela_obit.html?pagewanted=1&hp
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Prospero said on December 7, 2013 at 2:30 pm
Ichiro Suzuki is a class act.
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Sherri said on December 7, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Waterstones has a alternative to the Amazon drone delivery scheme: http://www.waterstones.com/blog/2013/12/introducing-o-w-l-s/#more-15525
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brian stouder said on December 7, 2013 at 2:57 pm
Well, I listened to Nancy’s audio-link, and enjoyed it altogether.
The guy who criticizes text book errors (literally) was quite interesting. The only thing I’d have pushed him on a little bit is that I recall, back in the day, that (for example) we hardly ever read the whole history book; my teachers were quick to point out just the sort of inaccuracies (not to say outright lies) contained in the books we had.
I bet if the textbook guy had been pressed on that, he would have quickly responded with a discussion of the elephant in the room (and that metaphor applies doubly, as the Republican party is ass-deep in this edu/political-correctness) – standardized testing.
Standardized testing, as it is currently employed (chiefly as a battering-ram against public education itself), is wrong on several levels, not least of which is the totalitarian “political-correctness” it cannot help but be co-opted by…..but we digress.
Just hearing the Proprietress laugh, along with the other journalist and Mr Gottfried, makes hitting the audio-link worth it.
And, thanks again to Jolene for all the high quality linkage. All good stuff – and it prepared me to answer at as much length as Chloe (our 9 year old) wanted, as we discussed her questions about this Nelson Mandella guy who died, and who they were discussing at school.
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Deborah said on December 7, 2013 at 5:32 pm
Well, my daughter and I lost the Little Drummer Boy challenge today, only a bit over a week after Thanksgiving too. We went into a store on the plaza and sure enough Little BIrd turned around and said, “we lost” and then it hit me they were playing it over the muzak. Shoot, last year I went the whole season without hearing it once. It was an awful rendition too, but aren’t they all.
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Deborah said on December 7, 2013 at 5:39 pm
Yes Jolene, I agree with Brian, thanks for all the excellent Mandella links.
And may I say Brian whenever I read your comments about your children, they sound delightful, so inquisitive and interested in the world around them. Good job, Dad.
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Charlotte said on December 7, 2013 at 6:52 pm
When I was in college, I had a girlfriend who grew up in Kenya. Her mother was French and her father was from Afghanistan. Ruby and her mom took the ship to France one year, the long way, around the cape. When they got to South Africa, they started to disembark to go to dinner. The purser stopped them. Ruby was quite dark, and he explained they would not be allowed to eat in the same restaurant together. It was just a little thing, but when you’re 20, well, it sort of blew all our minds (especially since Ruby was one of the most beautiful and sophisticated women I went to school with).
And Ichiro has beautiful handwriting … not that I’m surprised.
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Deborah said on December 7, 2013 at 7:47 pm
I just finished reading the Bill Keller piece in the NYTs about Mandela, that Jolene linked to, the best one I’ve read yet. This partial linestruck me, not that it was the best line but it resonated with me: “Mr. Mandela’s instinct for compromise in the interest of unity…” wouldn’t it be great if a certain party in the US that starts with R would learn from that? Compromise in the interest of unity, it can’t be that hard, can it?
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Prospero said on December 8, 2013 at 11:56 am
What the hell is wrong with people?
http://www.parentsociety.com/pregnancy/17-horrifying-baby-shower-cakes/
Well the baker on #5 seems to have given mom a anatomically correct clitoris. Not for the faint of heart nor the weak of stomach. And definitely not while eating anything. The number of horizontal birth canals is fairly alarming.
And what in the world is up with this guy?
http://www.tmz.com/2013/12/08/paul-walker-crash-burned-tree-bark-from-accident-ebay/
OSU’s fate was sealed when Pope Urban Meyer announced he wasn’t going to suspend the players ejected from the Michigan game. Instant karma you oleaginous bastard. But OSU traadition sqays don’t suspend the players. Ask Terelle Prior. Thing is, he could have suspended them for the first quarter, and nobody would have thought anything of it.
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Prospero said on December 8, 2013 at 2:36 pm
Lions lead Eagles 8-0 at half in a whiteout snowstorm.
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Prospero said on December 8, 2013 at 3:31 pm
David Bowie made some great movies, and I always thought The Dark Crytal was one of them, along with Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and The Man Who Fell to Earth. This is a version restored to Jim Henson’s original.
Entertaining video about common misquotations.
Remember the first time you went to Mickey D’s? Burgers were 19 cents. Paying a considerabky higher minimum wage is not going to put Macs out of business, and if you believe it will cause the franchisees to lay people off, you must be undeer the misapprehension that the company is employing workers it doesn’t need, out of the goodness of its corporate heart. Slim chance. MacDonalds’ immense profits come from selling masive amounts of food-like substances at low prices. Raising wages might result in small cost increases, but dimunition of MacDonalds business because of that would require massive changes of shopping habits by Americans. Again, slim chance. Mickey D’s employees are paid $7.25 an hour, while the CEO is compensated $8.55 million. That is obscene. If the CEO runs the company into the ground with bad decisions, he goes out the door with a massive golden parachute.. The only decision the Mac CEO really has to make is how exoritant a franchise fee the company can get away with. Tough job.
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Prospero said on December 8, 2013 at 3:47 pm
That MacDonalds CEO pay is closer to 600 average worker’s pay than the 270-300 times American companies average.
http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/defining-challenge-time/
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Prospero said on December 8, 2013 at 5:52 pm
This is exactly the sort of boondoggle GOPers think it makes sense to spend money on, while cutting food assistance programs, unemployment benefits, Pre-K programs, and S-Chip for uninsured kids. One word for this: disgraceful. But I bet Halliburton or KGB is making money off it somehow.
Nope. No racists in Houston, Texas.
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Jolene said on December 8, 2013 at 7:04 pm
More Mandela: A very sweet, touching remembrance from Francois Pienaar, the captain of the 1995 rugby team that was the subject of the movie, Invictus. They seem to have developed a relationship that went well beyond the photo ops prior to and after the Springbok victory.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/francois-pienaar-remembers-nelson-mandela-20131208-hv4ui.html
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Jolene said on December 8, 2013 at 7:35 pm
Even better, here is a video interview with Pienaar. Much the same words, but a very charming presentation.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?autoplay=1&v=BMMrhZzp3Mw&desktop_uri=%252Fwatch%253Fv%253DBMMrhZzp3Mw%2526autoplay%253D1
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brian stouder said on December 8, 2013 at 11:02 pm
Let me just say – Pam and the young folks and I watched 21/2 hours of The Sound of Music (still have a chunk to go) – and let me just say, Ms Underwood is absolutely tremendous! The weight of the show is on her shoulders, and she carries it magnificently.
And as for the multi-racial cast, I think that’s an effective and satisfying comment on the absurdity of the whole damned undercurrent of apologia; and indeed maybe a sly repudiation of the idea of “good Austrians/Germans” and bad Nazis.
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