I don’t think it’s any secret that most people who write for a living eventually want to write books. At least one, anyway. There’s something about that ISDN ISBN number that says: Ah, immortality.
But alas, it seems your best shot at author-hood these days is to be a troll. From Amy Chua to the Princeton Mom, the path to success is: Needle the shit out of people. Chua:
The “triple package” is touted as the combination of magic ingredients that enable certain ethnic groups to achieve extraordinary success in modern America. Chua and Rubenfeld identify three key qualities: a superiority complex, a sense of insecurity and “impulse control”.
It should not surprise you to learn that both Chua and her husband, who is Jewish, both come from certain ethnic groups that achieve extraordinary success in modern America. They just want to help! As to the Princeton Mom, aka Susan Patton, well, she’s a real piece of work:
“Marry Smart” (which Patton plans to follow with Parent Smart and Work Smart) advocates starting the husband-search during the college years. Its advice ranges from practical (“plan for your personal happiness with the same commitment and dedication that you plan for your professional success”) to old-fashioned (“it’s the lonely cow that gives away free milk”) to charmingly kooky (an ode to her “lifelong imaginary friend” Caroline Kennedy) to shockingly offensive (a chapter entitled “Birds of a Feather” denounces interracial and interfaith relationships). She also questions the legitimacy of date rape. “‘Date rape’ is like ‘politically correct,’” Patton tells me, as she holds out a bone for Lucille. “Either something is correct or it isn’t. Saying something is ‘politically correct’ is like saying you ‘almost won.’ You ‘almost won’? That means you lost.”
What helpful advice for young women. What a penetrating, forward-thinking insight for a rapidly diversifying culture. What crap.
Oh, but why start the weekend off on a sour note? My workplace officially moves to the D today, it’s Pi Day, and there’s no reason not to spend some time thinking about, oh, the missing Malaysian 777, for instance, which now could be en route to Mars, for all the rest of us know.
The search for a missing Malaysian jetliner with 239 people on board could expand west into the Indian Ocean based on information that the plane may have flown for four more hours after it dropped from radar, U.S. officials said Thursday.
A senior American official said the information came from a data stream sent directly by engines aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. If the two engines on the Boeing 777 functioned for up to four additional hours, that could strengthen concern that a rogue pilot or hijacker took control of the plane early Saturday over the Gulf of Thailand.
The sea is so, so big. Who knows where the thing is?
As to the Ban Bossy movement, I have nothing profound to say, only that any writer who voluntarily gives up standard language ought to get their card pulled. What a waste of time. Maybe that’s Sheryl Sandberg’s next book.
Finally, I bid you all a great weekend. I think I will…pine for spring.
Sherri said on March 14, 2014 at 2:31 am
If somebody wants to start a ban on the word “pussy”, then I’m on board. Bossy? Not worth it.
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Basset said on March 14, 2014 at 6:54 am
Why’s that, Sherri? And what would you use in its place?
Meanwhile,I will throw out something totally unrelated that I found really interesting – photos by a British aircraft carrier crewman during WW2, both on board and ashore:
http://m.imgur.com/a/cXnew
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alex said on March 14, 2014 at 7:47 am
Speaking of banned words, Phyllis Schlafly and her sons are suing a relative who makes craft beer under the Schlafly name.
Each petition asserts that the word Schlafly, when standing alone, “has no usage or meaning other than as a surname.”
Just like “marriage is defined as only between a man and a woman.” Good luck with that, beeyotch. Frankly, I can’t understand why your enterprising nephew would want to be associated with a buzzkill like you. The association is the very thing that has prevented me from trying it at my local saloon where it’s featured. Maybe you’ll have a right to sue when he comes out with a label featuring your likeness entitled “Caustic Blonde.”
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 14, 2014 at 7:54 am
Entirely unfair and unjustifiable, but I’ve never met a Princeton grad, college or seminary, who wasn’t a smarmy jerk. The woman, who was on Morning Joe this week, appears to have one decent point: you will never have this concentration of high quality peers again in your life (which is a reason to make good use of your college years in many ways, not simply in marital terms). She then flogs that point beyond where the horse dies and keeps on thrashing.
My wife and I met and married in college, but I still found her whole schtick off-putting.
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alex said on March 14, 2014 at 8:10 am
And Brian, in response to your query at the end of the last thread, that’s a name that gets confused with mine all the time but we’re no relation. I think their roots go back to the wave of Alsatians (Delagrange, Martin, Roy, Pequignot, Dupont) who came here in the 1840s.
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brian stouder said on March 14, 2014 at 8:34 am
Thanks, Alex; that guy is well- spoken*, and – no bigger than FTW is, it occurred to me he might be some relation to you.
Jeff – you might want to re-edit that last sentence, before Mrs JTMMO sees it and gets the wrong idea!
*from what I’ve seen over the years at the FWCS board meetings
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beb said on March 14, 2014 at 8:42 am
Bossy isn’t a gender specific term the way bitch is so if you’re going to ban a word I’d ban bitchy and not bossy. Boss is a legitimate word for a supervisor; they’re expected to give orders. When we say someone is bossy it means they give orders even though they’re not in a position of authority. Men who are bossy are considered “take charge” guys. Women who are bossy…are anti-feminine. But if i were going to ban a word it would be douchebag as it implies that there’s something inherently unclean about the vagina.
We should all be thankful for the involuntary sacrifice of those hundreds of Malaysians lost aboard that missing airplane for keeping the Crimean Situation off our TVs. If it weren’t for the missing airplane we’d have to listen every night to Putin’s latest maneuver, or listen to John McCain belligerent ramblings, or Dick Cheney or Condi Rice — people who have been wrong about everything all their lives and yet are regarded as being “insightful.”
And a note to all our conservative readers — no good comes from electing Republican state legislaters as they represent the deepest, darkest part of the Id. Michigan’s Republican state legislature has just banned health insurance programs from offering any kind of abortion coverage, even for cases involving rape, incest or the health of the woman. Meanwhile Viagra is still a man’s god-given right.
(No one ever thinks that if your dick doesn’t work that’s God’s way of telling you, you’ve had enough sex….)
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brian stouder said on March 14, 2014 at 9:05 am
A word I’d ban is “impactful”.
It’s a stupid word, and the job it pretends to do is done better by “consequential” or “effective”.
I think “impactful” is the unclaimed child of faux-fancy words like “irregardless” and other-side–of-the-tracks words like “doohickey”
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coozledad said on March 14, 2014 at 9:18 am
I don’t have a God, but if I did, I’d wake up every day and kiss its ass that it didn’t let me get married into the breeding stock at the nation’s premier party school. Oh lord highest, who hath slain the Mansons before their conception!
I was a idiot in the colleges, and way after.
I knew plenty people who married wrong in college, who went on to marry better when they got out and started working. I also knew some riches for whom college was a sexual playground, but they’d go back to the Hamptons or wherever to find a spouse from their own enclave. Fun, bright, endearing people, but they were just practicing being kind to the servants.
Susan Patton reminds me of the strivers who would put out for a rich, only to find they are not like us. Good luck with that shit, honey.
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Peter said on March 14, 2014 at 9:19 am
The term I would ban is “square footage”. It’s AREA, same number of syllables, fewer letters, easier to say. What’s not to like?
Jeff, one of my favorite Simpson’s lines is when Sideshow Bob yells at his brother Cecil:
“You think you were a natural for the job because of your clown college degree!”
“I’ll thank you not to refer to Princeton as a clown college!”
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Deborah said on March 14, 2014 at 10:04 am
I’m one of those people who married wrong in college, then got it right later when I was out in the world and knew who I was.
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Bitter Scribe said on March 14, 2014 at 10:26 am
Something I didn’t know about this Patton until I read Meghan Daum’s column this morning: She got divorced last year from a man with a degree from an “inferior” school who “had no respect for the hoopla, the traditions, the allegiance, the orange and black.”
Whoever and wherever you are, you poor bastard, congratulations on your escape.
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Connie said on March 14, 2014 at 10:50 am
I have been involved with design, build, renovation of numerous libraries and it is always about square footage or square feet. Never heard area referred to.
I am hanging out in the Indianapolis convention center. There may be 9,000 librarians in town but this is Big Ten championship weekend and their fans are here in droves. My hotel restaurant this morning was filled with Illinois orange. It has been hard to get restaurant reservations.
Butler is unlikely to be in the NCAAs. New league and new coach, first year for each.
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Scout said on March 14, 2014 at 10:59 am
Banning the word bossy is just about the silliest thing imaginable. Really? As if there weren’t real issues to confront, they go after an innocuous word like bossy? Why stop there, let’s ban poopy head too. I’m offended by the word cunt, but if someone was to call for its banning it would probably become even more of a go to word for a large portion of the idiotopolis.
I just watched the Jon Stewart clips where he takes on the stupid at Fox “News” who set out to school him about food stamp abuse. It’s classic, as always, but it just makes me sick that his point even has to be made. Seriously, wtf is wrong with people? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/stewart-hits-back-fox-food-stamps
And what is with these puffed up, self satisfied women who want to take us back to the day when you went to college to earn your MRS? I’m pretty sick (and tired) of this whole movement to turn us back into baby making machines.
And don’t get me started on the slut shaming about birth control in order to make some obscure point about the dreaded Obamacare and religious freeee-dumb. The whole contraception controversy in general has been mostly advanced by MEN, a gender not noted for its restraint concerning premarital sex. Nice disconnect there – no problems with taxpayers paying for dick pumps and Viagra but contraception? SLUT! Who are they going to have all that enhanced sex WITH once they shame all the women into using aspirin between the knees after they throw us back to their imaginary 1950s? Good luck with that, but in the meantime, I’m sick of listening to it all.
Feeling a bit ranty this morning. It’s been a long slog of a week and I’m ready for some major weekend chill time.
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Sherri said on March 14, 2014 at 11:02 am
Basset@2, I’m not referring to the cat, but rather the term used among men to designate weakness. I really dislike the use of a slang term for a part of the female anatomy being used to imply that being a woman is an insult.
I have a problem in general with people using women as an insult. When men and boys in my dojo would say someone “hit like a girl”, I’d always ask them which girls in the room did they want to come hit them so they could see what a girl really hit like.
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Lou Gravity said on March 14, 2014 at 11:05 am
I believe you want ISBN, not DN.
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Kirk said on March 14, 2014 at 11:10 am
“Impactful” is a horrible word, and people who throw around “impact” as a verb to mean “affect” aren’t too facile with their English.
Meanwhile, don’t you feel better now, Scout?
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alice said on March 14, 2014 at 11:28 am
My nephew went to Princeton (government law) because “Ivy league only hires Ivy league.” Explains why the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Great scam at that school. Each class has a special tie or jacket, and once a year they all go back to campus & march around in their outfits. A perpetually adolescent donor pool, genius!
Around this house we use the proper name “the University of New Jersey.”
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coozledad said on March 14, 2014 at 11:31 am
One of the Republistans opts for full-on suicide.
http://wonkette.com/544085/congratulations-idaho-now-you-can-carry-concealed-weapons-on-college-campuses
I’d try to give a fuck about this, but as long as they’re doing one of their anarchic test cases, better a shithole like Idaho than the developed world.
What do they teach in Idaho state schools anyway? How to hold off Federal Law Enforcement on 2000 rounds and three potatoes a day? When to use a family member for a sandbag? How to torch a twenty foot tall cross with a minimum of fuel waste?
If there’s one thing that a hormone sump like college needs, it’s some guns. Thank you, Republicans.
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Ann said on March 14, 2014 at 12:02 pm
I’m clearly not paying close enough attention (but retirement is now 17 days away so I can start spending even more time on-line!) but do I understand you to be saying that your days of commuting to Lansing are about to end? Hallelujah! It’s leftover from my days in the U.P., where icy roads are how people die, but I’ve hated every mile you’ve had to put into that commute and your stories about it were seldom reassuring!
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Jolene said on March 14, 2014 at 12:16 pm
Coos, this piece was mentioned in the Wonkette article you linked to, but it really deserves separate mention. A few questions about the use of arms on campus from a Boise State professor:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/opinion/when-may-i-shoot-a-student.html
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beb said on March 14, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Sherri @15: word!
Scout @14: yeah, this has been a horrible week with its spring forestalled. I’m ready for the weekend, too.
There’s is a difference between “square footage” and “area.” Area denotes a dimensionless space. You need some area in from of your stove, but how much? Square Footage is a measure of area. If you need ten square feet in front of your stove you know how much area is needed.
Yeah, I read that “When may I shoot a student” article. The author has a valid point. If you;er carrying a gun you are expected to be proactive about security. How can you be sure a student is reaching for a pencil and not his Glock? Better to shoot first and worse about mistakes later. And people, when donating clothes to charity, be sure to check all your pockets first so you don’t accidentally give your loaded gun away…
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Julie Robinson said on March 14, 2014 at 1:54 pm
And here in Indiana, the legislature has just sent to the governor a law that would allow adults on school property to keep their guns in their cars. Excuse me, that’s their LOCKED cars, let’s keep it safe! http://jg.net/article/20140314/LOCAL06/303149982/1002/LOCAL
On a happier (or is it bossier? or tiger motherly?) note, those of you in the Fort can watch a teaser for a concert our son is in tomorrow at 7 on public TV. He’ll be soloing on You Raise Me Up at the actual concert Sunday, but I’m not sure if that will make it on the air. I’ll be packing the kleenex.
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Scout said on March 14, 2014 at 2:05 pm
Once again, Arizona (R-Crazy) is not to be outdone. What IS it with gun people? They have already WON! Why do they have to keep pushing it?
http://azstarnet.com/news/state-and-regional/arizona-bill-makes-taking-someone-s-gun-an-aggravated-assault/article_02d66d97-3422-587b-af7e-095e5b8cc8de.html
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Sueti said on March 14, 2014 at 2:13 pm
Princeton Mom: Is her targeted audience inclined to buy her book? My daughter would find this crap hilarious and ohsoquaint, except for the rape part of course. Who’s buying the books?
Missing plane: Why no phone calls, texts etc. from passengers if this was terrorism/takeover or something drawn out for hours? Were they out of range even on their normal route?
Ban Bossy: We do still live in a man’s world it seems, when fighting for our right to act like Donald Trump is a goal. Stand up for your rights, girls, and someday you’ll have your own cigarette brand! It just feels too 70s second-stage feminist to me and an issue we’re ageing out of.
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mark said on March 14, 2014 at 2:36 pm
Scout- Given your opposition to guns, why would you oppose harsher penalties for taking possession of one illegally?
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 14, 2014 at 2:54 pm
Dang, I figured I would have flushed out at least one offended Princeton grad reading here. Apparently we’re not much of an Ivy League hangout, more of a MAC & B1G crew.
Brian, if only I could edit when I mangle my clauses like that . . . 😉
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Scout said on March 14, 2014 at 2:56 pm
mark – stealing a gun is already illegal in AZ with minimum sentence requirements. So what is the point of this particular “pre-emptive” bill? Maybe you can enlighten us as to why state legislatures are spending time on stuff like this. I must be missing something.
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Julie Robinson said on March 14, 2014 at 2:59 pm
Jttmo, the closest you’ll get from me is having dated a Princeton flunkout who landed at IU. ‘Twas a great disappointment to his parents, who figured all those tuition payments to Cincinnati Day should have been worth more than just an Ivy admission. But, alas, Heineken.
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mark said on March 14, 2014 at 3:12 pm
Scout- I think it’s pretty silly legislation. But if I were trying to rid the country of guns, increasing penalties for obtaining them illegally might be considered incremental progress. Increasing penalties for behavior that is already punished as criminal is popular legislative activity, stupid and wasteful or not.
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Deborah said on March 14, 2014 at 3:15 pm
My husband went to Harvard, does that count? No, I guess not since he’s not a nn.c commenter and it wasn’t Princeton.
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Dexter said on March 14, 2014 at 3:22 pm
Sherri, I was knocked to the court and cracked my head in basketball a couple times, I was in several hard car crashes, and I survived a plane crash/super hard landing in Vietnam in which many were injured badly, but I never “saw stars” like you see in the comic strips until my first wife kicked me as hard as she could right in the middle of my back when I was sleeping on a couch. Petite blonde girl…pro ‘rassler’s power in her kick. (She was just bored, and instead of hitting her I simply made my way to my VW Bug and drove to Chicago to cool off. I got home late in the day…she acted like nothing even happened.
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Dexter said on March 14, 2014 at 3:26 pm
Deborah, Mo Rocca is a Harvard grad. I saw him on TV a couple days ago, he was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with “HARVERD”. I guess that’s Cambridge humor. 🙂
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Jolene said on March 14, 2014 at 3:26 pm
Michelle Obama is a Princeton grad. She seems pretty unpretentious, but she is hardly a typical Princetonian.
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A. Riley said on March 14, 2014 at 3:33 pm
I kinda hear the word “don’t be so bossy,” esp. when said to a little girl, as shorthand for “sit down and shut up.”
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Little Bird said on March 14, 2014 at 3:38 pm
It is inherently bossy to tell me I can’t use the word bossy.
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Charlotte said on March 14, 2014 at 3:43 pm
Bossy was one of the things my mother used to accuse me of — and have to admit, when I was younger it worried me. But then, many things worried me then. As I told Nancy yesterday on Twitter — this whole campaign makes me want to double down on bossy, own the bossy.
And my graduate school experience can confirm Jeff’s re: Princeton. Everyone I’ve known with a Princeton degree was a huge pain in the ass, and can’t stop mentioning that they went to Princeton. Ugh.
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Dexter said on March 14, 2014 at 3:48 pm
here’s a fun pictorial
http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Berkeley-s-quirkiness-up-front-for-all-to-see-5315846.php
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Basset said on March 14, 2014 at 3:53 pm
Sherri@15, it surely says something about our relative perspectives that I was thinking of the genital reference, not the pejorative.
Princeton and divorce… well, I may have gone to IU but Mrs. B doesn’t seem to have any problem with my lack of commitment to the Ferris State crimson and gold. Come to think of it, we’ll hit 33 years next Friday.
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Basset said on March 14, 2014 at 3:56 pm
Wait a minute… that’s two weeks from next Friday. I AM in trouble now.
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brian stouder said on March 14, 2014 at 4:09 pm
Julie – I’ll see if I can’t find the fine young at 7 tomorrow…
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coozledad said on March 14, 2014 at 4:18 pm
I deeply regret that I have shown myself and my fellows to be a punctured Hefty bag of Nazi filth, and I regret if I have offended any of you pinkos:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/austin-ruse-liberal-professors-shot-apology
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Scout said on March 14, 2014 at 4:27 pm
mark, we’re talking about AZ. Here is what else they’ve been up to this week regarding guns. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/12/arizona-house-passes-2-pro-gun-bills/6351063/
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Heather said on March 14, 2014 at 5:13 pm
Apparently Princeton Mom says women there should spend 75 percent of their time trying to find Mr. Right and only 25 percent on studies. I can see that going over real well with professors: “I only completed 25 percent of the assignment because I had to go to a frat party last night to identify my future One and Only.”
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Suzanne said on March 14, 2014 at 5:17 pm
Last visit I made to AZ, I noticed many of the restaurants had signs on or near the door stating that firearms were not allowed inside. Someone there told me it’s because firearms are allowed nearly everywhere else, but a business can ban them from their premises. Indiana is on course to make that illegal, too, I’m afraid.
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LAMary said on March 14, 2014 at 5:21 pm
I remember in the last seventies seeing signs banning guns in restaurants in New Mexico. These were very divey places around Gallup. Good green chile and no guns. I’m there.
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beb said on March 14, 2014 at 5:27 pm
Let’s see if I’ve got this right… Some drunk pulls out his handgun and starts waving it around drunkenly and I grab it and take it away from him I’ve committed a class 4 felony even though I’m protecting myself and anyone else there from a potential fatal accident? Are cops allowed to take guns away from people they’ve arrested? I didn’t see any mention of a cut-out for police action.
Of course my position is that accidentally discharge a gun and lose the right to own a gun for life. If you’re that stupid you can’t be trusted with a gun.
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Sherri said on March 14, 2014 at 5:34 pm
Here’s an interesting cultural analysis of the recent UAW defeat at the Chattanooga VW plant. Bonus: it uses “pussy” in the second paragraph.
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/16420/the_battle_for_chattanooga_southern_masculinity_and_the_anti_union_campaign
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Jolene said on March 14, 2014 at 5:49 pm
More nonsense on guns, this time from Georgia. Apparently, they are considering a bill that would make it OK for a person to use a gun in a stand-your-ground situation even if the person is not allowed (because of, for instance, a criminal history) to own a gun. Crazy.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/14/georgia-legislators-think-felons-should-be-able-to-shoot-you.html
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Hattie said on March 14, 2014 at 5:50 pm
I plan to write a book that I am sure will be well received. I will title it “A Waste of Time.”
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Jolene said on March 14, 2014 at 6:02 pm
. . . this whole campaign makes me want to double down on bossy, own the bossy.
That was the point–that calling women bossy was a way to slam them for taking responsibility, exercising authority, demonstrating leadership, whatever. The idea wasn’t to hush anybody up, but to draw attention, once again, to the reality that certain behaviors are interpreted quite differently when exhibited by women than when exhibited by men and to discourage the unfavorable characterizations of strong women that persist despite all the change that we baby boomers have seen in our lifetimes.
The idea is not to ban bossiness, but to encourage women to feel good about claiming authority and to discourage people of both sexes from labeling women who do so as bossy.
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ROGirl said on March 14, 2014 at 6:15 pm
Unions are not going to be voted in south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Even for companies that do business in Europe and deal with unions as a management level there, things are different in the south. There’s a knee jerk anti-union attitude in the south, and it manifests itself in virulent anti-union campaigns that equate joining the union with selling your manhood and giving up all your rights.
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Sherri said on March 14, 2014 at 6:26 pm
I know I never heard a good word about a union from anyone in my family growing up, and it’s not because my family was full of business owners. The general message I always heard was that unions protected lazy workers.
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ROGirl said on March 14, 2014 at 6:28 pm
Why don’t they just call it bitchy, instead of bossy? That’s the subtext.
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Jolene said on March 14, 2014 at 6:51 pm
Why don’t they just call it bitchy, instead of bossy? That’s the subtext.
Yes, but people don’t say bitchy in polite society. They may say bossy, and the idea is to point out that calling a woman bossy undermines her authority, that it is one short step removed from calling her bitchy.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 14, 2014 at 6:54 pm
“Alas, Heineken.” That should be a book title.
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Scout said on March 14, 2014 at 7:07 pm
Jeff @ 56: and it would be a biography about my ex-husband.
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brian stouder said on March 14, 2014 at 8:58 pm
Sherri – when I was growing up, my dad was a white-collar (do they say that anymore) guy with a company car and the whole bit….and then he changed jobs (in the years since, I’ve come to the conclusion that he was fired – but mom wouldn’t say, and nobody has ever confirmed that) and became a truck driver.
Back in those days, Fort Wayne punched out International Harvester trucks left and right, and my dad was then a Teamster. I got a job at Maloley’s, and was therefore a dues-paying member of the UFCW (part of the AFL-CIO).
In our part of town – southeast Fort Wayne, seemingly everyone was a Tokheim (meters) or Fruehauf (semi-trailers) or IH or Rea Wire worker, and almost universally – and proudly – union.
It was right in that time – circa 1981 – that Al Maloley sold his supermarket chain, and the new owners’ first move was to try and break the union, and we went on strike! It was the one and only time I walked a picket line with a sign…and unlike my colleagues, I made a point of wearing my shirt-and-tie for picket duty, because that’s the way the customers saw me at work.
The strike lasted 3 days and we prevailed completely….because almost NO ONE would cross our picket line! It was an absolute GIVEN – a matter of simple fact; those Tokheim/Harvester/Fruehauf/ITT/Rea workers and their families would sooner burn their own house down, than cross a picket line.
‘Course, the new owners soon enough began selling their stores off, and one way or another the union DID disolve, but not in the way that the chest-thumping morons who bought the chain wished
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brian stouder said on March 14, 2014 at 11:01 pm
This Malaysian 777 story is genuinely disturbing; both heartbreaking and confidence breaking.
Tonight’s ‘BREAKING NEWS’ is that it is almost certainly a case of human action of some sort; whether air piracy by (at least two) people on the plane, or by the flight crew themselves.
The one thing I previously thought was a certainty – that the plane has crashed – seems now to be a genuine possibility.
The thing could have been taken. But – certainly the damned thing cannot be landed just anywhere; it would take a long runway to land – plus a skilled pilot to land it – plus infrastructure to deal with the thing….plus the absence of prying eyes….and to what end?
One thing that the news noted, and which I had forgotten, was that Malaysia was indeed where several of our September 11 al Qaeda hijackers came from.
Imagine if you had a loved one on that plane; the choice is pondering their horrible demise in some endlessly blue, salty desolation; or summary murder at some god forsaken airfield somewhere
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Sherri said on March 15, 2014 at 12:17 am
Brian, there were unions around where I grew up, and my father was even in one for a while (Communications Workers of America – he started as a lineman for the phone company before eventually moving up into management.) But he regarded it as just money he had to pay to protect lazy workers.
There were manufacturers in my town that were union (Trane and Acme Boot), but mostly I heard negative comments about the unions when they went out on strike, even from union members.
Now, when I moved to Pittsburgh, that was a totally different world (in so many ways!) Pittsburgh was still a proud union town, even though the steel jobs were just about gone by then.
The South has never been friendly to unions; just more carpetbaggers, as far as most Southerners I knew were concerned.
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Dexter said on March 15, 2014 at 2:39 am
Back when I was a little kid in the late 1950s a giant supermarket was built called Eavey’s. It was on the south end of Fort Wayne and Dad and Mom would shop there sometimes. It was the largest food store in the world and had a giant horn-of-plenty on the sign. It was quite a place. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/207024914092714302/
Brian, I shopped at the Maloley’s on Broadway just south of Washington Blvd. when I lived there when I was attending IUPUFW. Maloley’s were all over the city then. Don Scott was just building his grocery empire then as well. My ex mother-in-law only shopped at Marsh Markets. They lived near Waynedale.
http://d1osaz8037wly2.cloudfront.net/images/r/598×398%3E/s/files.catylist.com/files/property/2330000/2334001/thumbnails/medium_2986764_IMG_1687_-_Cropped.JPG
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Connie said on March 15, 2014 at 9:58 am
Well this trip to Indianapolis has been an adventure. Last night while having dinner at Harry and Izzys I was pickpocketed. I had my purse hanging from my chair between me and the wall. A man sat down behind me and managed to get three credit cards out of my purse. As he stood up to leave the people at the next table realized what had happened and raised the alarm, but he got away.
The restaurant staff was wonderful, by the time I left the restaurant the cards were camcelled. They comped our meals which led us both to say darn, we should have had the 75 dollar surf and turf.
Interesting side note 1, the witness couple moved from Toledo to FW last year and have nothing but the best to say about the schools.
Interesting side note note 2, the reponding police officer went to Concord High School, graduating 16 years before my daughter did. Or as she put it, during the Sean Kemp years. I told her that where I lived they were the Damon Bailey years. Those were the two hs basketball stars who went up against each other in the state championship. After the officer left my roomie said, people from Indiana really do talk about hs basketball.
Checking out and heading home.
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coozledad said on March 15, 2014 at 10:19 am
Southerners don’t like unions because Sherman didn’t hang the planter class and rip out the entire infrastructure of slavery. So it wheezed back up on its feet, and what you have is a zombie version of the old system, with an attenuated version of the old grotesquerie of feudal ass-licking.
The slavery system, like any enterprise Southerners undertake and will ever undertake, required subsidies. All profits were privatized, all losses were borne by the federal government or smallholders
The planters knew if the former slaves and small farmers ever achieved a meaningful political alliance, they’d be hounded out of the country. So they crushed fusion politics in Koch brothers fashion and pulled the white trash back in the fold and reasserted the old order with pogroms.
Hell, they even had whites killing their white neighbors in Gastonia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loray_Mill_Strike
They didn’t even have to hire Pinkertons. The South only resembles the developed world when they’ve priced that crab-bucket white trash out of educated, prosperous, progressive enclaves.
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Deborah said on March 15, 2014 at 10:59 am
Connie, what a bummer. I had my purse stolen a few years ago, I had it slung over the back of my chair at a restaurant on Michigan Ave. I learned my lesson about hanging a purse like that. When I see women in restaurants with their purses hanging like that it makes me want to go warn them.
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brian stouder said on March 15, 2014 at 12:12 pm
Cooz – and indeed, pull the finger of one of these latter-day planter class apologists
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/03/13/3402081/arizona-candidate-entitlements-slavery/#
The temptation is to really, really over-react to this; and indeed, if this walking embarrassment was running for office in Indiana (and therefore embarrassing me) I believe I’d be over-reacting all to hell.
The unapologetic (and invincible) ignorance of these people is really, genuinely and sincerely grotesque. I saw a clip of some sonofabitch in a suit and tie on Fox News, attacking President Lincoln for fighting against the rebellion – since afterall he could have simply bought all the slaves (at market prices) and ended it without the exponentially more expensive war…!!!
If that guy had anything more than shit for brains, he’d know that President Lincoln actively advocated for precisely this, making precisely the same argument, and he included that exact proposal in his formal message to Congress (the State of the Union address forerunner) – even leaving aside that the planter-class proto-Koch Brothers are the bastards who wanted the rebellion and who started the shooting war.
Honest to God – I believe we’re close to the tipping point, wherein the goddamned zombie version…of the old grotesquerie of feudal ass-licking takes firm enough control of the levers of government to start really teaching all these facts-that-just-aren’t-so (the better to counter all the ‘lies from the pit of hell’ – otherwise known as provable facts)
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Jolene said on March 15, 2014 at 12:31 pm
Brian, that sonofabitch is Andrew Napolitno. He was on The Daily Show this past week and had to contend with a panel of real historians that Stewart had invited. You can see the clips here:
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/guests/andrew-napolitano
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brian stouder said on March 15, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Joene – your link has left me absolutely gob-smacked.
Honest to goodness, and with all due respect to the unwritten rules of the internet, one could apply that very same Napolitano sonofabitch’s argument to a defense of Hitler’s nazi-ism, and assign blame for the second world war onto Poland.
Afterall, the Poles clearly tricked the goddamned nazis into firing the first shot, right?
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brian stouder said on March 15, 2014 at 1:11 pm
Jolene – this link, from your original link, is quite the amusing Lincoln refresher
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/guests/andrew-napolitano/abrzf9/exclusive—the-weakest-lincoln
It made me laugh, and the dark cloud that had formed over my head scudded away
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Sherri said on March 15, 2014 at 3:20 pm
Here’s a palette cleanser, after all the down talk of unions and Lincoln – a beautiful piece by Ron Suskind about learning to communicate with his autistic son: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/magazine/reaching-my-autistic-son-through-disney.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
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Sherri said on March 15, 2014 at 4:04 pm
Oops, palate, not palette.
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Deborah said on March 15, 2014 at 8:08 pm
Sherri, I read that NYT piece by Suskind a couple of days ago and I found it quite moving. Being the mother of a daughter who has some issues equivalent to the high end of the autism spectrum I found it very interesting.
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