I wish I had more to tell you about the weekend, but it was pretty quiet, rotating around a friend’s 50th-birthday party. His wife threw a dinner party that was pretty luxe in every detail, up to and including the personalized beef Wellington:
Which were even prettier after they came out of the oven:
And there was fondue beforehand, and creme brûlée afterward. Alan was asked to bring his propane torch, and he put a nice crackly crust on the dessert. It was all quite glorious.
I got the birthday boy a Moleskine and a new pen. He’s recently jumped into journaling with great enthusiasm, and watching him explain his various systems made me wonder if I needed to write more down. Honestly, I haven’t felt like writing much more than grocery lists for months. Maybe it’ll get the gears moving again.
So, just a few bloggage items today:
Neil Steinberg considers the good old days.
I knew there was a good reason I had no idea who Tony Robbins was until just recently.
And now I’m going to do the Sunday crossword. Monday awaits.
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 8, 2018 at 9:29 pm
Steinberg’s piece is excellent. Folks like he’s trying to engage with miss the days they think they remember, and do not thank any of us for pointing out it wasn’t quite as they recall.
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Joe Kobiela said on April 8, 2018 at 9:59 pm
Someone was wondering about Alegiant air, they slid one off a runway in the Dakota’s today, no one hurt, and it was snowing, and it could have happened to anyone, when we airline out or back from base, we don’t fly Alegiant. But I wouldn’t tell anyone not to fly them, just some friendly advise.
Pilot Joe
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brian stouder said on April 8, 2018 at 10:50 pm
Steinberg’s piece is indeed excellent.
And speaking of excellent journalism, just finished watching msnbc’s documentary (or whatever) on Robert Mueller. While it fills-in the details that we mostly already know of this Type-A legal professional, it enlightened me about several things I didn’t know about Mueller.
For one thing, I didn’t realize he is a decorated Vietnam war combat veteran. He could have skated past that war even easier than President Trump did, but instead the Princeton student enlisted and “saw the elephant” (repeatedly), and earned several medals for valor, and a purple heart.
PS – that old-time NN.c link about Fort Wayne talk radio was indeed very smile-inducing. Mark the Shark and his family are a local institution, and certainly exemplify all that is best about Fort Wayne
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beb said on April 8, 2018 at 10:53 pm
The golden age of science fiction is thirteen. I think the golden age for anything was maybe 5. Old enough to get anything you want and young enough to not go to school.
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brian stouder said on April 8, 2018 at 11:11 pm
Forgot to mention – those food photos look more enticing to me than (for example) the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated!
(front-of-mind, as I stopped for a soda pop at a Circle K, and they had said-issue of SI on a rack on their cash register counter! I asked the lady if anyone even buys those, and she said “yep!”)
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BigHank53 said on April 9, 2018 at 3:34 am
My favorite question for people wishing to live in some past historical period is “When was novocaine invented?”
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David C. said on April 9, 2018 at 6:11 am
Someone pining for the good old days is a smile and nod situation. People don’t like their illusions broken. I found out in a big way this weekend. A bunch of my family got together and “named a star” for my grandmother – because grandma liked space. I came in after the conversation was started and didn’t know they’d actually done it and it was for grandma. So I said those things are a scam and the only ones who recognized the name are the ones who took the money. Now they’re all really pissed at me. Take it from me always smile and nod. You don’t get into any trouble that way.
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Deborah said on April 9, 2018 at 6:38 am
David C, those star names are recorded somewhere officially and they’re usually done for people who already have everything that money can buy. We did that for my husband’s uncle and his third wife for Christmas one year.
This cold and cough are hitting me hard. Ugh.
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Andrea said on April 9, 2018 at 8:22 am
This snow is B.S.
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Suzanne said on April 9, 2018 at 8:58 am
I agree with Andrea. BS snow. Ugh. The winter that never ends.
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Julie Robinson said on April 9, 2018 at 9:15 am
If it were the good old days I’d be dead, so I’m pretty happy for modern medicine, especially antibiotics.
Although I would like to turn the clock back to November 8, 2016.
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Suzanne said on April 9, 2018 at 9:41 am
Ah, the good old days. Yes, they were just great if you were white, middle class, didn’t contract any dread diseases, and didn’t step out of your lane. They were great for me growing up. I had a nice family and nice friends. I also didn’t know about Jim Crow, didn’t know about lynchings, didn’t understand anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish sentiments, didn’t understand the horrors of war, didn’t know about the Holocaust, didn’t know about child abuse. We didn’t know any Catholics or Jews. People who were mentally handicapped or autistic were locked away from sight. I lived in a white Christian bubble and didn’t have a clue it was a bubble.
I once read about Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden as an analogy for leaving childhood and growing up. You can’t go back. No, you can’t, even if you get rid of all the bad things you didn’t understand as a child. But, it seems, a great many people don’t understand that.
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Sherri said on April 9, 2018 at 10:08 am
I always thought it was notable that none of my grandparents were particularly nostalgic. I spent a lot of time growing up around my mother’s parents especially, yet I know very little about their lives growing up. Neither of them talked about that much. I imagine farm life without electricity or plumbed water wasn’t something you wanted to go back to.
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Deborah said on April 9, 2018 at 11:09 am
So does anyone think the Cubs are going to play in Chicago today? Brutal.
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Sherri said on April 9, 2018 at 11:26 am
An update on the article to book path: Ben Lindbergh, who wrote the article about me for The Ringer, doesn’t have the time to turn it into a book because he’s got another book project in the works. He recommended another writer, based in Seattle, and I met with her RHS past week. We’re both interested in working together, and the publisher is still interested, so the process continues.
It’s been a surreal time for me. In the past 12 months, I’ve lost 35 lbs, won a big award, saw my daughter graduate from college, became a powerlifter, and had an article written about me. The only part of that I expected was my daughter’s graduation.
And she’s finally showing signs of stirring; she’s planning a trip to Japan, with an eye towards maybe teaching English in Japan.
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nancy said on April 9, 2018 at 12:00 pm
I remember watching a story about an elderly farm couple celebrating some milestone — both living to 100, 75th wedding anniversary, something like that. The reporter kept trying to lead them down a “them was the good old days” path, but they were adamant that farm life is unquestionably better now, for a million backbreaking reasons, including indoor plumbing, electricity and powerful tractors. In fact, they seemed amazed that anyone would even ask about it. Obviously, only someone who had never had to haul ice blocks would do so.
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Julie Robinson said on April 9, 2018 at 12:18 pm
My folks both grew up on farms and remember no electricity or indoor plumbing. That meant cooking started with cutting down trees and hauling the wood, waiting for the wood to season and cutting it into usable sizes, then carrying it in and trying to keep the stove lit and at an even temperature. Afterwards the ashes had to be emptied out and disposed of. Can you imagine the joy when my grandmas got their new gas or electric stoves?
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Dorothy said on April 9, 2018 at 12:46 pm
I get awfully irritated by those who yearn for the so-called good old days. And if I hear “but that’s the way we always did it!” when someone mentions a better, more efficient way to do something at work I have been known to say “Well we used to get our mail delivered by Pony Express but that is no longer the case!” Shuts the complainers right up.
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Deborah said on April 9, 2018 at 12:46 pm
Julie, I had to laugh because your description of life on the farm for your parents is exactly what we do at our cabin in NM and we love it. Except for the cutting down trees part, we have a lot of old dead wood on our land from the bark beetle infestation a few years back. My husband uses his battery powered chain saw (which they obviously didn’t have) to chop it up for our small wood burning stove. Granted we’re not out there every day. It would get mighty old I imagine if that were our reality. We haul in our water in gallon jugs too, but we refill the jugs for 40 cents a gallon at the general store. At my grandfather’s farm they hand pumped the water into buckets, and it tasted nasty too.
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Scout said on April 9, 2018 at 12:47 pm
The good old days for me were 2008-2016.
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Dorothy said on April 9, 2018 at 1:02 pm
I missed this last night but I read somewhere that it could be viewed on YouTube. It’s about Robert Mueller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOuESoEFigw
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Jakash said on April 9, 2018 at 1:12 pm
The Cubs have postponed Opening Day until tomorrow. The White Sox, scheduled to play at home at about the same time, which is unusual, are evidently going ahead, though they’ve delayed the start by 20 minutes. A couple tweets, showing a snow-covered Sox field at 9:00, cleared by 11:30. The Sox have long been very proud of their grounds crew and its boss, so kudos to them, I suppose. Obviously, a regular game isn’t quite the same as the Opening Day festivities, but score one for the South Siders… Well, for anybody clueless enough to want to go to a freaking baseball game today, that is. ; )
https://twitter.com/whitesox/status/983356256130883585
https://twitter.com/Andy_Masur1/status/983384164606140416
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Julie Robinson said on April 9, 2018 at 1:34 pm
Better you than me, Deborah. My idea of camping is hauling my own food to the hotel.
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susang said on April 9, 2018 at 2:01 pm
Beef Wellington and creme brûlée? Haven’t had those dishes in decades. Talk about the good ole days, such a lot of work. Hope they’re coming back, along with all the other dishes of the past.
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Sherri said on April 9, 2018 at 2:29 pm
We had electric heat, but we used a wood-burning stove to save money. We usually didn’t cut down the trees, but cut up trees that fell on my grandparents farm. So I’ve done plenty of hauling firewood and building and tending fires and cleaning out ashes, and as I say to surburbanites who was nostalgic about rural life, I got an education to get the hell out of there!
My parents finally replaced their wood burning stove with a propane burning stove about 10 years ago when they hit their 70s and decided they were done getting their own firewood, plus they were having trouble with people stealing it.
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Mark P said on April 9, 2018 at 3:24 pm
The star-naming companies say the name is “official” but it’s not recognized by anyone but them. You can name a star, and even write up something saying you named it and have that copyrighted. That would be as official as the companies who do it.
We have a wood burning stove that I like to use. When we built our house I put in a forced-air duct from the ceiling over the stove to our bedroom to distribute the heat from the living room. I’m nearing 68 and still like to cut and chop the wood for it, but I can foresee a time when I won’t feel like doing it. We have a heat pump for then.
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Dorothy said on April 9, 2018 at 4:02 pm
New formatting?! I’m too excited about this to really take a good look. READ THIS!!!!
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/us/politics/fbi-raids-office-of-trumps-longtime-lawyer-michael-cohen.html
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Icarus said on April 9, 2018 at 4:15 pm
Jacobs returned to the camp at Buchenwald in 1995 for the 50th anniversary of liberation and the opening of a new museum. He says the camp had become a kind of “cathedral” for German communists because of the underground resistance.
A narrative of self-liberation by the underground was fomented during the GDR years. But this was now the early days of German reunification. And Jacobs says he found himself caught in the middle of a German propaganda war.
The new museum pointedly referred to the camp’s liberation by the U.S. Third Army, showing footage of prisoners praising in English the Americans. It replaced the old exhibition that focused heavily on the story of communists in the camp.
“One side’s just as bad as the other, they’re both denying history,” Jacobs thought as he realized what was going on around him.
The truth, he believes, lies somewhere in middle. The camp was undoubtedly liberated by the U.S. Third Army.
But there was also an uprising at the same time, contributing to liberation efforts, and it’s down to the communist-run underground that so many people survived Buchenwald.
By the time the Americans turned up, 21,000 inmates were still alive at the camp, though around 240,000 people had passed through its gates between 1937 and 1945.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-apos-m-holocaust-survivor-133308232.html
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Suzanne said on April 9, 2018 at 4:30 pm
I just saw that, too, Dorothy. Seriously, would anyone but the most gullible believe that Mr Cohen, of his own accord, would pay $130000 hush money to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about sleeping with Trump and Trump would know nothing about it?
Someone speculated (here, maybe) that something in the Trump/Melania pre-nup will go very badly for Trump if his wife discovers he had “relations” with someone so soon after the birth of their son, which is why he’s so tight lipped about it. Could be. Who knows?
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Deborah said on April 9, 2018 at 4:43 pm
A new look! I like it, of course I assume it’s JC’s doing. It’s cool that you change it up from time to time.
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Jakash said on April 9, 2018 at 4:49 pm
Whoa! Interesting changes. But now you can read the names of the commenters easily again; what fun is that? ; )
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bb in de said on April 9, 2018 at 5:28 pm
I remember a fun evening at a gathering in grad school where someone brought up the subject of Ayn Rand. We took turns admitting that we thought she was great when we were first introduced to “Atlas Shrugged” back in the day, right up until we tried to re-read her in our 20s only to realize that she and her novels were hideous. Based on that conversation, I’d say to BEB @ 4: the golden age of SciFi *and* Ayn Rand is 13. The age of reason averaged about 22.
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Julie Robinson said on April 9, 2018 at 5:52 pm
Love the new look! It’s so much easier for my stupid bad eyes to read.
Go Mueller!!!
Icarus, one addition to your article about Buchenwald: on this day in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Germans at Flossenburg Concentration Camp. He was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who was involved in a plot to kill Hitler. He had been here in the US and could have stayed, but decided to return to Germany and fight the Nazis.
Bonhoeffer was 39. I treasure his books, especially The Cost of Discipleship, and wish I had that kind of moral courage.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 9, 2018 at 6:07 pm
A fellow in a church I used to serve as pastor was delightfully quick to point out, in a wonderfully delivered narrative that got funnier to hear when you knew what was coming, that whenever someone would go off on a “good old days” tangent he’d describe Mama coming in from the barn with a battered old pail straight from the cow, warm and foamy, and (at a length I won’t replicate in print) would then pour each eagerly waiting child at the kitchen table a glass of fresh milk . . . after having skillfully flicked the small brown bits of manure off the surface of the pailful.
And wrap up with “at least today, for all its flaws, you don’t have to knock the crap off your milk out of the jug from the store!”
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David C. said on April 9, 2018 at 6:16 pm
Nice. I agree, it’s much easier on my tired old eyes.
What Mark P. @ 26 said. The International Astronomical Union names things in space. They have a statement that names of astronomical objects aren’t for sale. I’m told things are settling down at home. Only half are still mad at me and half are mad at the bogus star naming company. I don’t know if mom polled them or what.
https://www.iau.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/
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Peter said on April 9, 2018 at 9:05 pm
Speaking of loving the old days – one time we had a project that called for a decent amount of plastering. One day I was at the jobsite and an older plasterer was mixing up his compound; the foreman said that the plasterer must miss the old days when all surfaces were hand troweled plaster instead of drywall. The plasterer said absolutely not; when he started, a worker had to put up 300 pounds of plaster – AN HOUR – in order to make union wages. He said switching to drywall gave him at least ten years more of life.
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Deborah said on April 9, 2018 at 9:09 pm
Since I’m still sick (and bored) I spent a big chunk of today binge watching more of Season 3 of Better Call Saul. As I said here after watching only a few of the 3rd season episodes I wasn’t impressed but I must say it got much better and now I’m really into it again. I’m up to episode 8 or 9 now.
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brian stouder said on April 9, 2018 at 11:28 pm
What a news day, eh?
When the Trump version of “All the President’s Men” gets written, April 2018 will be a key juncture, I think.
One supposes we’ll wake up, one morning soon, to the news of a surprisingly massive military strike on Syrian targets – the better to wash away all this news of raids on crooked lawyers’ offices and porn star-payoffs and so on, eh?
I think we all foresaw a Trumpian train-wreck, as we digested the news of his presidential victory*, but now that it is upon us, the scope of it is becoming daunting
*his victory will always get an asterisk from me, as 3,500,000 more Americans voted for his opponent than for him
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Jakash said on April 10, 2018 at 12:35 am
This is the kind of thing that I don’t know what to think about. Does it highlight political correctness run amok, or society evolving and even seemingly “with-it” shows not keeping up? I imagine that Cooz, were he still visiting nn.c, would just say that I’m a racist, and leave it at that. (Although he’d say it much more eloquently and, uh, colorfully, needless to say.)
The issue: “The Simpsons” and the show’s portrayal of Apu, the Indian convenience store owner. “Hari Kondabolu, a comedian of South Asian descent” made a movie addressing what he considers the racist stereotyping evidenced by the portrayal/caricature. The show responded Sunday night “with a dismissive nod that earned the show more criticism, especially from Mr. Kondabolu himself.”
I’ve been fan of “The Simpsons” for years, though I can’t say that I’ve been a devoted viewer for all 29 seasons. I didn’t watch when it first came out and Bart seemed to be the star, then we were regular viewers for a number of years when it was in its heyday, but we’ve kinda lost touch for, oh, a decade or so, at least. But it certainly appealed to my cynical, absurdist sense of humor. The thing is, I’m also pretty much of a bleeding-heart lefty, and “woke Twitter” is all over this — condemning the show and its response to the issue. My go-to reaction is that if people are offended, then it’s offensive. But, in this case, *every* character on “The Simpsons” is a caricature of some kind. That’s a large part of what makes it funny. And the portrayal of Apu has never been hateful or oppressive, from what I could tell. So I’m conflicted about it. Just wondering if anybody else here gives a crap about this issue, or the show, one way or the other…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/arts/television/the-simpsons-responds-to-criticism-about-apu.html
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Sherri said on April 10, 2018 at 1:07 am
Caveat: I have never watched the Simpsons on any regular basis at all.
I believe part of what people are unhappy about is that Apu has been voiced by a white man, who has said that he modeled the voice after a Peter Sellers impression of an Indian. In an environment where it is difficult for Indian actors to get work, a white man is voicing an Indian character and mimicking another white man caricaturing the Indian accent back in 1968. Imagine a white actor using Mickey Rooney’s character from Breakfast at Tiffany’s as the basis for voicing a Chinese character today. That would seem pretty racist, no?
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Dexter said on April 10, 2018 at 2:27 am
I like the new font and general new look Nall page. Pleased like I was about 50 years ago when my favorite sports weekly went to off-set printing. Before that, the printed pages were not definitive, especially the all b&w photos. Once, Pirate great Clemente was shown in the clubhouse celebrating the win by holding up a bottle. When he was informed it was the cover shot, he demanded the editors distinctly write “HONEY” on the bottle so kids would not think it was wine or booze. Clemente was like that, a clean liver. He lectured kids to “never do anything you wouldn’t do if your family was watching”. Nice words, but jeeze…a buzzkill for sure. Yeah, lotta snow up on Addison & Clark, while the Sox played . And…lost, again…4 in a row. Not very good.
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Dexter said on April 10, 2018 at 2:42 am
Our family’s first house was a little rural frame place. The year was 1949. It had one cold water faucet and a sink. The outhouse was 150 feet from the house. Blue Racer snakes were freakin’ everywhere. It had an oil space heater, filled by pouring fuel into the tank by hand. When we left, it was shut down to save money. We’d come back to a freezing house. Until 4th grade, our school had two outhouses. Rattlesnakes were spotted in the nearby hedgerow. “But I was cool!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dheVr7Wdrro
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alex said on April 10, 2018 at 6:47 am
Haven’t watched the Simpsons in years and find myself amazed it’s still going strong after 29 seasons, especially when it has been eclipsed by much edgier fare like South Park and Family Guy, two other long-running cartoons where neither children nor adults ever mature in the least and which are chock-a-block with scathing stereotypes that make the Simpsons’ Apu character seem pretty tame. My ox gets gored on South Park fairly often yet I’ve never taken offense. It’s a fucking cartoon. It’s supposed to be irreverent. I wouldn’t bother watching it if it weren’t.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 10, 2018 at 8:58 am
Happened across this post about mysteries set in Venice, and just thought “I’ll bet there’s a bunch of folks at NN.C who’d find this interesting.” So here it is:
https://crimereads.com/crime-and-the-city-venice-city-of-masks-and-mystery/
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Deborah said on April 10, 2018 at 9:46 am
I’ve been a Dona Leon fan for years, have read a lot of her mysteries but had no idea there were 27 of them, I need to get busy.
The other mysteries I used to read are the Tony Hillerman ones for obvious reasons. His daughter has written a few now, extending the series since his death.
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Connie said on April 10, 2018 at 10:14 am
Must read. Jack Lessenbury on Trump: https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/we-are-really-in-mortal-danger/Content?oid=10763784
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Suzanne said on April 10, 2018 at 10:30 am
This jumped out from Connie’s article linked above:
“For nearly a year and a half, we’ve treated Donald Trump as if he were a normal, sane politician with a scandalous side.”
This has driven me to drink. I listen to news, read news, watch news, and I hear all the time, “Well, President Trump thinks this”, “President Trump believes that”, “President Trump’s policy decisions thus”. He believes nothing except in himself and he has no plans except to enrich himself. How is this not obvious to anyone paying even a modicum of attention?
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Connie said on April 10, 2018 at 10:44 am
Yes to Suzanne. Worst recent thing: Trump calls the subpoena for lawyer records an “attack on our country.”
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Sherri said on April 10, 2018 at 11:05 am
I’m also a Donna Leon fan, have read all but the last few of her Brunetti books.
Alex, I don’t watch South Park, either, so I can’t say what goes on there, but I’d note that there’s a big difference in punching up vs punching down. Too many “edgy” and “irreverent” white male creators seem not to get the distinction, and think that everything is equal fodder and act all offended when people call them on it.
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Sherri said on April 10, 2018 at 11:59 am
Rather than more meaningless Zuckerberg apologies, here are some things that might actually help with regards to Facebook and the rest: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/opinion/zuckerberg-testify-congress.html
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Jeff Borden said on April 10, 2018 at 1:09 pm
The film in which Peter Sellers plays an Indian actor is Blake Edward’s “The Party,” which is among the lesser works of both men. Released in 1968. It is chockablock with stereotypes –rich Hollywood producers, show off actors, hippies– but none larger than Sellers’ bumbling character, who is constantly smashing and crashing into things. The love interest is Claudine Longet. Amazingly, I saw this film on a flight home from Rome years ago. It was even worse than I remembered.
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Peter said on April 10, 2018 at 2:01 pm
Suzanne, outside of the Fox viewers, I don’t think anyone thinks that Trump believes in anything other than himself. McConnell, Ryan, et. al. surely know that, but they are spineless wimps who know that crossing the Orange One will only result in a never ending Twitter shitstorm. Better to pretend and hope you outlive him, a la Stalin.
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Jakash said on April 10, 2018 at 2:22 pm
It seems to me that “The Simpsons” writers punch up, down, and sideways. Certainly the dumbest, most ridiculous character among the whole gang is the straight, white Homer. The cruelest characterization, it seems to me, is reserved for the rich, white guy, Mr. Burns. And the AARP can hardly be happy about the portrayal of Grandpa Simpson.
I imagine that the reason they don’t have an Indian actor playing Apu is because they’ve had the same core group doing *all* the main voices for decades. Granted, it’s not a particularly inclusive group. But the idea that they’d have a representative for each demographic making an appearance, even if they’d wanted to, would have been a non-starter for financial reasons, I’d guess.
Hank Azaria, the guy that voices Apu, addressed the matter in January. “The idea that anybody, young or old, past or present, was bullied or teased or worse based on the character of Apu on ‘The Simpsons,’ the voice or any other tropes of the character is distressing” he said. “He only ever intended to ‘make people laugh and bring joy,’ he said. ‘So that it caused any kind of pain or suffering in any way, it’s disturbing, actually.'” Also remarking: “I think, over the years, they’ve done a really good job of being, shall we say, uniformly offensive without being outright hurtful.”
http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/hank-azaria-simpsons-apu-controversy-1202663830/
I would agree with those who found the handling of this matter on Sunday to be lame and dismissive. I would have expected a more enlightened and less reactionary response from the creators and writers, if they were going to make a point of responding at all.
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Dorothy said on April 10, 2018 at 3:46 pm
Sherri – it’s a minor point but Mickey Rooney was playing a Japanese, not Chinese, man in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. “Mr. Yunioshi” was his character’s name. And I found this quote from Blake Edwards (the director) on IMDB:
In the 2006 short documentary Breakfast at Tiffany’s: The Making of a Classic (2006), Blake Edwards said that when the movie was made, he didn’t think about the implications of casting an actor of European heritage, Mickey Rooney, in a role as a Japanese person, but “looking back, I wish I had never done it… and I would give anything to be able to recast it.”
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Scout said on April 10, 2018 at 4:41 pm
Rewatched Breakfast at Tiffany’s recently and I was actually horrified by the Mr Yunioshi character. I’d forgotten about that. I’m obviously out of step with what constitutes a classic. Without Audrey Hepburn that movie would have been unwatchable.
The Zuckerberg hearing is a Twitter feast. https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/983791801009131521
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Sherri said on April 10, 2018 at 5:46 pm
It’s not just casting, it’s also the writing rooms that are too male and too white. And the show runners. And the directors. Someone might not always realize when they’re punching down, and having a wider set of people around can help.
How people act when it’s pointed out to them that they’re punching down, though, is a pretty good indicator of just what privilege looks like.
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Sherri said on April 10, 2018 at 6:08 pm
This article sort of gets at some of what I’ve been saying about autonomous vehicles: it’s the software that’s the difficult part, and it’s a lot harder than the current level of software automation in cars today. That’s why I believe we’re more likely to see more bits and pieces from autonomous vehicle tech move into standard cars (more like automatic parking systems) than we are to see fully autonomous vehicles in the next five years.
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Sherri said on April 10, 2018 at 6:09 pm
Oops, the link: https://www.wired.com/story/when-will-self-driving-cars-ready/
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basset said on April 13, 2018 at 8:16 am
Sherri@56, what do you think the solution is to the issues you’re describing? Or is there one?
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