My mind is awhirl this morning, people. Awhirl. First I read Dahlia Lithwick’s entirely accurate piece in Slate, which carries the headline The Uneven Playing Field and should be subtitled, “the case for mud.” She points out what is obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together:
Is (Franken’s resignation) the principled solution? By every metric I can think of, it’s correct. But it’s also wrong. It’s wrong because we no longer inhabit a closed ethical system, in which morality and norm preservation are their own rewards. We live in a broken and corroded system in which unilateral disarmament is going to destroy the very things we want to preserve.
This is the case many of you were making in comments yesterday. It’s the one I’ve made in the local debate at the University of Michigan, where Richard Spencer wants to speak sometime soon. He has retained a lawyer who is, like him, a white nationalist. The smart people around here are saying yes, let him speak, but the public discussion is all high-minded First Amendment chin-stroking. I have long been bothered by this, as it fails to consider that Spencer, Milo, et al are not coming to the Marketplace of Ideas (motto: “your credit is good here!”) in good faith. Rather, they’re seeking to stir up antifa and generate another few minutes of civil-unrest video they can peddle to Fox News, which will in turn use it to frighten your parents in their retirement communities.
To be sure, U-M appears to be on to them:
In response to a request from Cameron Padgett of Spencer’s National Policy Institute, UM offered the group four dates – Nov. 29, Nov. 30, Dec. 27 and Dec. 28 – “but none of them have been convenient for the event organizers,” Bristow said.
School was/is not in session on any of those dates, of course.
And then there’s David Brooks’ much-discussed column today, the cri de coeur of the not-insane, not-corrupt, nice Republican:
There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom. And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him. Trump may soon ask them to accept his firing of Robert Mueller, and yes, after some sighing, they will accept that, too.
That’s the way these corrupt bargains always work. You think you’re only giving your tormentor a little piece of yourself, but he keeps asking and asking, and before long he owns your entire soul.
Well, duh. But at the risk of setting off Coozledad again, this is the party its voters have chosen. And chosen, and chosen. A little hand-wringing by liberals’ favorite conservative isn’t going to change that. You may accuse me of paying too much attention to my former employer, but I was genuinely interested in how their staunch conservative editorial page was going to handle its 2016 presidential endorsement. The editor who ran it calls himself a libertarian, and always will. He’s also offended by populism in a way that only a autodidactic conservative can be. I figured they’d go for Gary Johnson, but no. The ensuing editorial was a masterpiece of nonsense and nose-holding, and began with a line probably no journalist has ever written before: “Thank God for Mike Pence.” The argument was that populist Trump will flame out early, and then we’ll get rock-solid conservative Pence, and All Will Be Well. It’s an argument that was stupid the day it was published, and even stupider today, when the flameout shows no sign of being nigh.
The hole we’re in keeps getting deeper, though. Funny how that happens.
Oh, well. Let’s pop to the bloggage:
I’ve said before that Amazon product customer reviews will be winning Mark Twain awards before I die, and I stand by that statement, in this case for the Make America Great Again hat Christmas ornament:
Not happy. We hung it on the tree, and within minutes it worked its way up the branches and assaulted the 14-year-old angel on the top.
An excellent Vice News video piece about the role tax foreclosure plays in Detroit. Sounds boring, isn’t.
Because I have to leave you with something uplifting, here’s this: We can’t take any more of 2017, so we’ve turned to the Hallmark Channel in desperation. Hilarious:
(T)he Hallmark Channel — and its sister channel, Hallmark Movies and Mysteries — has released, in 2017 alone:
“Thirty-three movies,” Vicary says.
Thirty-three movies.
They work on them year-round, each put together quickly, with a modest budget of a few million dollars, and then they debut a new one almost every night in December.
They are always Christmas-focused but tend to celebrate the season rather than Jesus Christ. They are often about a high-powered career woman who needs an invitation to slow down. She is played by someone from that show you used to watch circa 1992-1998. She will meet a moderately attractive man who looks like an Old Spice commercial. The plot might be reminiscent of a specific big-budget feature film, except smaller budget, and with Christmas.
Good weekend, all.
coozledad said on December 8, 2017 at 11:48 am
So it turns out the forced-birth partisans were evil, lying bastards all along? Who coulda knowed.
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adrianne said on December 8, 2017 at 12:01 pm
My mother-in-law is addicted to Hallmark holiday movies! I watch them ironically with her and keep my snide comments to myself.
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Scout said on December 8, 2017 at 12:02 pm
I said it yesterday and I’ll repeat it now; 2017 has sucked beyond all of my wildest expectations for it. It says a lot about the decline of our nation when the latest school shooting barely gets notice because “only” three people died.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/12/07/police-shooting-reported-new-mexico-high-school/930867001/
Or when the horrific conflagration in southern Cali is hardly noticed by anyone who isn’t right in the midst of it. http://www.latimes.com/local/wildfires/
I don’t know why Al Franken’s resignation is the thing that put me under the table. Even knowing that Leanne Tweeden was groomed for weeks by a crony of Roger Stone’s before her reveal wasn’t enough for Dems to give him the benefit of the doubt, or at least a fair investigation. No, the high road had be the only road and the place the sanctimonious will perch to observe the total havoc the ever shameless Republicans will continue to wreak. I keep reading on Twitter how this was such a brilliant chess move that will make the Rs do something about their sexual predator problem and I think, oh sure, right. A Russian plant who is incidentally a sexual predator is in the White House, voting disenfranchisement and gerrymandering are real and the people in power to make laws are poised to begin the process of dismantling the ACA and then our social safety net to benefit themselves and their obscenely wealthy cronies. But by all means, let’s all fart rainbows out of our purity unicorn assholes.
Merry Fucking Christmas, America. We’re all getting a bag of fracked coal.
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coozledad said on December 8, 2017 at 12:14 pm
If I’m supposed to be “set off”, I might as well go all the fucking way “off”‘
I’m always surprised by the number of “liberals” who just get rolled over by the idea there is any intellectual basis to the white nationalist movement that is the post WWII Republican party.
The inescapable conclusion is these people have quite a bit of racist baggage themselves, and they’re slowly letting themselves be walked into the white nationalist fold.
There seems to be this idea among a bunch of middling idiots that there’s such a thing as a noble racist, or a half racist.I’ve been trying to find out how people can think this way. The first few times I encountered this nonsense I thought it was a kind of olive branch to the stupid. But no, it’s another manifestation of tribalism, more specifically the tribalism of the mediocre as opposed to the broader tribalism of the nascent lynch mob.
I got hung up on that error too long. People who believe they have some hotline to the “good side of racists” are simply transitional racists themselves. They’re only waiting for their own age of fear to completely overtake them and their television remote. They’re white, they’re unable to read for subtext*, and they’re the next generation of Fox News gulls.
We got Trump because the political calculus of this country looks like a goddamn Fort Wayne homeowner’s association, and they’re as savagely racist as they are plump with a kind of bovine self-satisfaction.
They remind me of the German housewives bitching to Martha Gellhorn after the allies rolled up another suburb.
“They broke our furniture” they wept.
*Reading for subtext often simply involves what Wendy Doniger calls “listening for the dog that doesn’t bark.” The dog hasn’t barked about the tax cuts directed at the poor, or cops killing unarmed black males, or barked about stripping drug treatment funding… any number of things that make it an altogether quiet dog when it comes to the fundamental evil of its party.
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beb said on December 8, 2017 at 12:35 pm
One of the lefty blogs I read has stated that thinking that Al Franken was the victim on a right-wing conspiracy was just crazy talk. There were too many accusers, or something. I think it’s crazy not to consider that it was a conspiracy. Look at all the women the GOP dug out who claimed Clinton tried to pick them up. The R’s are not above that kind of thing. And remember Sen Franken has been on a tear during Sen. Justice committee hearing, asking witnesses all kind of sharp, probing questions. It’s clear that he had to go. Then look at the kinds of omplains made against him. Aside from the first, they were claims that during public photo event he has laid a hand on her butt instead of their waist, or that he pinched a roll of fat on the waist. This is not “walking around his underwear” or “showing his penis” kinds of sexual deviancy. These are claims both minor and unprovable. This has all the earmarks of a ratfucking. And I’m sorry Franken felt he had to do the ‘honorable’ thing.
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Mark P said on December 8, 2017 at 12:39 pm
I guess the result of the Alabama senate election on next Tuesday will tell us whether the unicorns have arrived. I’m not betting on it.
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Brandon said on December 8, 2017 at 12:40 pm
The editor who ran it calls himself a libertarian, and always will. He’s also offended by populism in a way that only a autodidactic conservative can be.
“Libertarianism Has Nothing to Offer Populist Authoritarians.”
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Icarus said on December 8, 2017 at 1:13 pm
from the previous thread just in case…
Thanks susan and Deni Menken. My issue is you are not supposed to run on artificial knees and although my marathon days are behind me (and the reason my knees are so bad) I still enjoy logging as much mileage as I can. It’s cheaper than therapy and I’m not allowed to drink at the office anyway.
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Julie Robinson said on December 8, 2017 at 1:22 pm
In the car I heard a commentator say they think Franken’s resignation “in a few weeks” will become I’ll resign when Roy Moore resigns, should the worst happen next Tuesday.
Besides political hell, I’m in estate hell. My sister is due $229 in utilities refund and so far I’ve spent at least 10 hours trying to get it. Three times they told me they didn’t receive the Personal Representative (Florida equivalent of Executor) letters I sent them, once they told me the check was mailed, and now they tell me it was deposited in her credit union account and accepted.
Only that account was frozen a few days after she died when we took in the death certificate, and the money is definitely not there. Utility says it’s the credit union’s fault, credit union says…well, you get the idea. It’s Whack-a-Mole and the house has stacked the odds.
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susan said on December 8, 2017 at 1:29 pm
icarus @8, boy howdy, that has to hurt, running on uncushioned joints. You can walk fast on fake joints, though. That’s not running, but still… And you won’t turn into a bow-legged cowboy. Maybe you do want to fit perfectly on the back of a horse.
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Jakash said on December 8, 2017 at 1:56 pm
“Now he asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism.” Whatever else ole Rumpy asked for, he sure as hell didn’t need to ask for that. It’s been clear as a bell since Reagan, at least, that the only deficits “good, honorable Republicans” care about are the ones that are present during Democratic administrations. Whatever else it was, the Iraq War was not a fiscally conservative enterprise, e.g. Of course, while he was on a roll, he was surely gonna *try* to pin every single bit of the rot on the dentured Dotard, however shameless the effort…
“Donald Trump seems to have made gaining the world at the cost of his soul his entire life’s motto.” Can’t argue with that one, though!
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Icarus said on December 8, 2017 at 2:31 pm
Julie Robinson, I feel your pain. forgive me if I posted this before but recently I finally received closure on some monies due my family for 17 years.
The process for claiming the money is designed with the nuclear family in mind. Grandparent had one spouse, maybe two children and they are all together in one unified fashion. If you grandma never actually divorced spouse #1 and had a child with said ex, who is estranged from his half siblings, it gets a little murkier and the generic forms they send you just don’t cover these scenarios**.
**I’m being sarcastically theatrical here but It didn’t help that over the years my family has not been the most united family on the planet.
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Joe Kobiela said on December 8, 2017 at 3:45 pm
Icarus,
Wife has had both knees replaced, one at 49 one at 59, best thing she has done. Know of two others who have had one and both replaced and still run, thats kinda a personal decision. I guess they won’t last as long. I had a meniscus tear repaired along with some cartilage, removed and ran my 12th Marathon 6 months later, Dr told me that my running actually was good for my knees.
Pilot Joe
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Julie Robinson said on December 8, 2017 at 3:59 pm
Icarus, that sounds like a nightmare too. Jeri never married or had children so it really ought to be easy. I’ll be heading down to Orlando last next week and if we haven’t resolved it by then I’m considering calling one of the TV stations. I feel like playing up the fact that mom is an 85 year-old widow would be appealing.
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coozledad said on December 8, 2017 at 4:35 pm
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-dying-after-giving-birth-shalon-irvings-story-explains-why?utm_ca
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Deborah said on December 8, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Jerry, the William Morris museum is in Walthamstow, it was fascinating, not the most well executed exhibit design but very informative none the less. I’ve been interested in Morris since the 80s, I learned a lot today. It took about 2 hours for our driver to get out there only an hour to drive back. My architect husband knew all about the red house, that I had never heard of until today.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 8, 2017 at 6:17 pm
Is that where Strawberry Hill is/was?
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David C. said on December 8, 2017 at 6:18 pm
David Brooks is liberals’ favorite conservative? Like the shape of the earth, opinions differ.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2017/09/david-brooks-is-monster.html
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Sherri said on December 8, 2017 at 7:13 pm
Ijeoma Oluo says it better than me: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/al-franken-abused-women-should-resign-it-s-ok-admit-ncna827556
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Jakash said on December 8, 2017 at 7:49 pm
As I said yesterday, I believe Al Franken deserved to be humiliated and censured. “So why are so many on the left, myself included, still wrestling with feelings of sadness and anxiety?” For me, because “banishment” for his offenses is too extreme a punishment and because his fate will have no effect on either the Republican enablers of harassment in their party, nor the run-of-the-mill jerk that does the kind of stuff that Franken is alleged to have done and will see what Fox News thinks about it and then vote for Roy Moore.
The raising of awareness is important, for sure, and will be ongoing regardless of what happens to this Senator, but the Democratic party continuing to bring knives to gun-fights has gotten us where we are today. I’m sure there must have been some principle involved in graciously allowing McConnell to steal a Supreme Court seat, as well. It wasn’t worth the price. IMHO.
I hope a woman is appointed in his place, and is then elected, and then goes on to an illustrious career in the Senate. And that harassment becomes rare, rather than prevalent. And I’ll be happy to eat my words if that happens and think that a lot worse things have happened to people for lesser cause than what’s happened to Franken. But I’m just not counting on the payback coming in 2018 that a lot of folks seem to be counting on, because I’d never have believed we’d be in the sorry state we are at this point, courtesy of the kind of folks who think Moore’s story is a charming throwback to the days of Mary and Joseph.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 8, 2017 at 8:29 pm
Sorry, should have said Kelmscott Manor (was thinking of Walpole) and clearly it’s a different location; William Morris’ birthplace. Hope to hear more about it!
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basset said on December 8, 2017 at 10:15 pm
Thought someone would have mentioned by now that John Lennon was murdered 37 years ago tonight.
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Dexter said on December 8, 2017 at 10:49 pm
TCM showed the 1951 Alastair Sims “A Christmas Carol”and backed it up with the 1935 version starring Seymour Hicks…leavin my fave 1938 edition starring Reginald Owen in the can…BAH! Humbug! Oh well, I mean, I do have the dvr of my fave…it’s just nice to scream “BAH! Humbug!” once a year.
Snow, cold on the way or here, ( can you believe Corpus Christi got SIX inches of snow yesterday & today?)..and here’s the peril of driving old P.O.S. vehicles: rolled down side window at a drive-thru, motherfucker stuck all the way down. I popped off the side panel and jiggled stuff around…dead as Jacob Marley, who died seven years ago this very night. I called my mechanic shop and they took over, declaring the switches, relays, and motor are toast. The window was risen , and shall stay that way infinitum. $32 bucks, well worth it for the help. Nice thoughts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOLSPevX42k
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Diane said on December 8, 2017 at 11:28 pm
No. Just no.
I know I won’t change anyone’s mind here and I don’t know why I’m writing this but here goes. I was quite firmly in the ‘censure Franken but keep the seat’ camp until a couple days ago (and no one screamed louder than me about the Nadar voters in the Bush/Gore election).
Then something snapped. I don’t know what or why so I know I have no way of causing anyone else to have the experience. But I’m done thinking that not tolerating sexual misconduct is something we can’t afford. The fucking high road is the one that doesn’t stand for sexual misconduct?!! That’s the fucking normal road, even if the the low road is to elect a pedophile to the Senate. I don’t want to start on the slippery slope that says he’s too important to do without or too valuable to my causes because at the bottom of that slope is turning a blind eye to Weinstein because he is too important to the industry or pretending that pedophilia is not an impediment to being a Senator. So, no, just no.
Yes, I do understand that grabbing an adult woman’s butt is a far cry from taking advantage of a 14 year old. But doing it to multiple women says you think women don’t have a right to control who touches their bodies, that a quick grab is yours for the taking. And, well, it is not.
I do not particularly care for Gillian Flynn’s books but I thought this was worth the few minutes it takes to read it. http://time.com/5050757/gillian-flynn-on-women-speaking-out-sexual-harassment/
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Deborah said on December 9, 2017 at 3:03 am
Going to Nottinghill to Portobello market this morning. I’ve never been there before, but my companions have, many times so this should be interesting.
Because the William Morris excursion took way longer than we thought we still haven’t made it to the Tate Modern.
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alex said on December 9, 2017 at 7:43 am
I read somewhere that Barbara Bush just rolls her eyes when George H.W. grabs women’s butts. Being in a wheelchair he could bite their butts if he wanted to. Does being a senile old fart whose wife is in on it somehow mitigate the outrage?
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adrianne said on December 9, 2017 at 8:21 am
Read Jimmy Breslin’s column, written on deadline, two hours after he heard about Lennon’s death. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/archives-jimmy-breslin-tells-aided-john-lennon-article-1.2039625
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nancy said on December 9, 2017 at 8:26 am
I was working a 7-3 shift at the time Lennon was shot, so I went to bed early. I didn’t hear about it until the next morning, on the radio while I was getting dressed, and all I heard was that “something” had happened to him. I had to call Kirk, on the early-morning news desk at the Columbus Dispatch, to find out what it was.
Today: Push alert would have come from both the WP and NYT, Twitter would have exploded, and I’d know everything there was to know by midnight.
By way of contrast, I had a friend who was an early-early adopter of internet technology, who was on – remember this? – Compuserve. He was chatting in a group, which included a member who lived in an apartment with a clear sight line to the Dakota front door. He reported that something was happening over there, lots of activity, but he didn’t know what.
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ROGirl said on December 9, 2017 at 8:42 am
I’m still conflicted about forcing Al Franken to resign, but ultimately I think it was the right thing to do. Despite the uneven playing field, going along with the other side’s tactics would just escalate to some unknown level of shit. Although he has been a good senator, I guess I’m not surprised about his unwanted gropes and grabs. Back in his comedy days he struck me as smarmy and schmuckish. Maybe that was part of the act, but maybe not entirely.
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Mark P said on December 9, 2017 at 9:34 am
I have had my say on Franken, so no more on that subject from me. On the brighter side, here in Rome, Gs, we woke up to a surprise snow. Up on the mountain where we live we had about 7 inches total, although not all stuck (except on the cars, where I measured). It’s beautiful today but it will be gone soon.
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Suzanne said on December 9, 2017 at 11:01 am
https://twitter.com/brandonlancast2/status/939521840778829826
Called this several days ago.
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Jeff Borden said on December 9, 2017 at 11:13 am
My guess is the lasting legacy of the Orange King and Republican control of Congress will be the hundreds of hard-right federal judges being appointed to slots that went unfilled under President Blacky von Blackenstein because Mitch McConnell is a syphlitic cocksucker who refused to allow them to proceed. Neil Gorsuch is simply the cherry on the sundae. As progressives try to clean up the garbage fire the GOP has created, those judges will be there to stop them.
Has anyone seen the polling on this abortion of a “tax plan?” It’s disastrous. And yet, we all know it will pass, just as we all know the clods who voted for the pussygrabber-in-chief will take it up the ass. As has been said before, “You can’t fix stupid.” I’ve no doubt the lemmings will find a way to blame the Democrats.
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Jeff Borden said on December 9, 2017 at 11:15 am
Here’s something to make you laugh. . .
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/here-are-11-of-the-most-punchable-faces-of-2017/
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alex said on December 9, 2017 at 11:25 am
Wouldn’t want snot on my knuckles from any of those mugs.
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Brandon said on December 9, 2017 at 1:59 pm
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017/12/08/john-conyers-special-election-congress/934206001/
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Suzanne said on December 9, 2017 at 6:01 pm
Again, Trump’s evangelical supporters are over the moon about the Jerusalem situation. It will bring about war which will hasten the Rapture.
https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-evangelical-supporters-welcome-his-move-on-jerusalem-88775
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alex said on December 9, 2017 at 6:18 pm
Tonight trying something new in the Instant Pot that’s perfect for the first snowy night of the season. Smells divine right now as it’s pressurizing. Pho ga.
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Deborah said on December 9, 2017 at 6:38 pm
Rain tomorrow in London and then snow is predicted for Monday, not a lot, but still. We went to the theater tonight, saw Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman of No Importance”. It was OK, not stellar but pretty good, basically a Victorian send up, there were some very funny parts. The first act was borrrrring but it got better. The best parts were in-between act interludes, while the sets were being changed behind the curtain. Five characters came out and performed hilarious songs and played instruments badly on purpose, they were in full character throughout. There was a ditzy old lady character in the play who was the main feature in these interludes. She sang satirical lyrics in a warbled old lady voice and it was a stitch. That was worth the price of admission itself. Not sure if those were in the original Wilde play, but if someone added them, they really knew what they were doing. Also the play was very timely, as one of the main characters was an asshole successful business man who took advantage of women, and in one case a very young woman.
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Dexter said on December 10, 2017 at 4:20 am
I was also on a 7-3 shift and did have Howard Cosell and ABC Monday Night football on the bedroom black and white tiny TV, but I remember I had had a long post-work beer session at the VFW and had passed out just before the announcement by Howard. I had to get up by 5:30 and I had turned on Toledo’s WIOT rock station and it had turned to talk radio…Ron Bennington, XM99, 12-3 PM said Friday that that night was the invention of talk radio, where live calls to radio stations were the main reason for the time slot. After work I drove straight to a record store at Time Corners Center in Fort Wayne and bought the only Beatles record left: The White Album.
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susan said on December 10, 2017 at 10:37 am
I was working on a big archaeology project along the Columbia River back then. I had gotten up early, as was my wont, and had heard the horrifying news as I pulled on layers of clothes. It was December. One needed layers of clothes. Heard it on KGO-AM out of San Francisco, one of the only radio stations we could get out there, because it ran on 50,000 watts at night. You could find KGO just about anywhere in the west at night, even it in Minnesota, especially in winter. Amazing it could jump the Rockies. But the atmosphere was often its friend. They had listeners in Alaska. And Mexico.
I made my way to the kitchen/dining trailer. The fellow I worked with doing stratigraphic profiling soon came in bleary-eyed, with his usual morning taciturn demeanor, headed for the tea-kettle. I had my black coffee. It was just the two of us in there. We liked to start really early and get out to the sites before the rest of the crews did so we could work in peace. Plus, the light was better earlier than later. I told Kevin that John Lennon had been shot. And killed. We sat there stunned, actually in grief. We were shocked, but kind of surprised at our tears. We didn’t know John Lennon. But I think we instinctively knew things had changed, for the worst, right then and there. And they had. We realize that now. 1980 was the beginning of the real end of this nasty nation. There was Reagan. And now there wasn’t John Lennon.
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Joe Kobiela said on December 10, 2017 at 1:59 pm
Watching Monday night football and Howard Cosell of all people, made the announcement.
Pilot Joe
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Dave said on December 10, 2017 at 2:41 pm
Otis Redding is gone 50 years today. I became an Otis fan when I bought a remnant rack album that was live from the Monterey Pop festival in 1967 that feature Jimi Hendrix on one side and Otis on the other. Also, Dock of the Bay always reminds me of WCOL, the AM rocker in Columbus and my senior year in high school.
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basset said on December 10, 2017 at 3:35 pm
I was in the newsroom at channel 38 in Terre Haute. We were an ABC station, and the phone started ringing off the hook with people asking if Howard Cosell had really said that.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 10, 2017 at 9:04 pm
We got our AP from sheets torn off at the university’s NPR AM station four blocks away, so our dorm radio network was reacting to phone calls about John Lennon’s death, from people who’d been watching Monday Night Football until I guy ran over with the confirmation in his hand. I was hanging around in the lounge, someone else was on air and I wasn’t up for a couple more hours; the DJ played “Imagine” of course after the initial read of the AP story, and then it was Beatles and Lennon cuts all night until dawn. There was a guy at the station who had worked clubs in New York, and we had him calling friends to try to find out what had happened, what anyone knew, but no one knew anything. I don’t think any of it really set in until I played “When I’m Sixty-Four.” That choked me up, even as a callow and relatively thoughtless nineteen year old.
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Deborah said on December 11, 2017 at 6:03 am
Leaving London this evening, will be back in Chicago at 8pm. It’s been very enjoyable but I’ll be glad to be back home. We leave for NM on Weds. Not crazy about all of the time at airports.
I lived in St. Louis at the time of Lennon’s death. I was at home, the TV was on and I remember telling my husband (ex) but I don’t remember much else about it except that it was the topic of conversation at work the next day.
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Brandon said on December 11, 2017 at 1:09 pm
Jill Stein isn’t ruling out a 2020 presidential campaign.
http://www.newsweek.com/jill-stein-bernie-sanders-wont-be-2020-democratic-nominee-726496
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beb said on December 11, 2017 at 1:43 pm
My least favorite Food Network chef has had to step down from his company. Mario Batali. I think it was his little boy shorts and sandals. What kind of grown up dresses that way.
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Brandon said on December 11, 2017 at 2:48 pm
[H]is little boy shorts and sandals. What kind of grown up dresses that way.
Come to Hawaii sometime. Though it’s most often the tourists who wear sandals. We wear slippers (what you might call flip flops).
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Mark P said on December 11, 2017 at 3:49 pm
It’s beginning to look like we should just name the public figures who have – not – been accused of sexual harassment. (New defense: It’s OK; everybody does it.)
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Jolene said on December 11, 2017 at 5:51 pm
The New Yorker severs ties with Ryan Lizza, a fairly prominent reporter, but, in my view, handles it badly in that they give no info re the reason for their decision.
If you are going to publicly trash a person’s reputation, seems like you should provide some justification.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on December 11, 2017 at 7:00 pm
And I’m not so much desperate to redeem Garrison Keillor as put off by what looks like a remarkably opportunistic move by MPR to wipe not only Keillor but “Prairie Home Companion” and Pretty Good Goods and Writer’s Almanac and anything he ever had anything to do with off their website and airwaves. Something seems a bit off about that, like this gave them an opportunity to void some inconvenient contracts. I don’t find it impossible to believe he’s been abusive, but when the public claims are about the most minimal I’ve heard of all these and yet he’s gotten a more complete non-personing than anyone up to and including Harvey Weinstein, it just leaves me wondering what’s really going on here.
My church contacts in Alabama, who are not themselves Moore supporters, tell me to expect to see him get elected. Right now I’d hate to bet a junction box slug for or against him, but the “don’t tell us what to do” faction sounds like they’re closing ranks around Judge Creeper.
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Jolene said on December 11, 2017 at 7:43 pm
Jeff(TMMO): I copied this statement from someone’s FB post. It’s an email from MPR re why they have disappeared Keillor’s material.
email from MPR: Thank you for contacting Minnesota Public Radio. We appreciate your comments about The Writer’s Almanac.
Because Garrison owns the trademarks to The Writer’s Almanac, A Prairie Home Companion and related brands, content associated with those trademarks are no longer available on our web site. We apologize for the inconvenience.
We understand that these recent developments have been difficult for our members. Garrison has made many contributions to the growth and success of MPR for nearly 50 years, and he’s been an important part of many of our listeners’ lives as well. As you might imagine, this decision wasn’t made lightly.
We want to assure you that the allegations were investigated carefully before this decision was made. We haven’t made additional details public because the individuals who made the allegations have chosen to keep their identities private. We respect that choice.
While we’re not able to provide you with more details, please know that we are committed to providing a safe and secure work environment for our employees.
Again, your feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know. You can reach Member & Audience Services at 651-290-1212 (M-F, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.)
Tamara Vose
Senior Product Manager, CRM
American Public Media
651.290.1499
tvose@mpr.org
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Sherri said on December 11, 2017 at 7:59 pm
I expect Moore to be elected. “Don’t tell me what to do” pretty much sums up the South, and white resentment more generally.
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Joe Kobiela said on December 11, 2017 at 8:57 pm
Well some polls have Moore up slightly, fox has him down 10 so who knows. He could win then resign and the Governor would appoint a replacement.
Wonder if you can bet on it in Vegas.
Pilot Joe
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David C. said on December 11, 2017 at 9:17 pm
It looks like you can, Joe. http://www.lasvegassportsbetting.com/2017-US-Politics-Alabama-Special-Election-Las-Vegas-Odds_P24441.html
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