Self-editing, or the lack thereof.

Looks like national humiliation hasn’t curbed Tim Goeglein’s thirst to be A Writer. The Journal-Gazette carried another of his contributions over the weekend; hat tip to Alex for passing it along. Ahem:

What gives Fort Wayne its distinct sense of place and definition? What makes it a unique locale?

What about any city could never be part of a franchise of any other time or era?

Monuments and memorials of surpassing beauty certainly cohere that sense of place. So do beautiful buildings of distinction and proportion. A city’s cultural institutions play a large role in the composition of a city’s personality, tempo and style.

There are other works of art not normally put into a category of high achievement but which seem to live with us as things elegant but easily taken for granted or overlooked like a strand of pearls or a fine-cut stone or a filigreed lamppost on a shady, quiet city street.

Oh, god. Do we have to do this again? Monuments and memorials are close enough to being synonyms that you can drop one. Certainly, like most adverbs, is disposable. The second graf seems to be what he’s getting at — to put it more simply, let’s make a fuss over the little things. So where are we going, Tim?

In Fort Wayne, there are two neighborhoods, one south and one north, that deserve our celebration and further attention – as if they are great paintings or meaningful poems. They are probably irreplaceable and certainly matchlessly noble, grand and even lush.

I knew exactly which ones he was going to single out — Old Mill Road and Forest Park Boulevard — immediately, and why? Because they are constantly celebrated and paid attention to, “like great paintings or meaningful poems,” etc. etc. They are two neighborhoods with no shortage of blah-blah written about them, so of course those are the ones Tim singles out:

In summer, these inviting and lovely neighborhoods offer leafy coolness against the background of their shaded homes. Their canopies of trees, well-clipped lawns and beautiful old stonework seem to offer us a welcome respite and refreshment on otherwise molten days.

In fall, their autumnal and kaleidoscopic colors are inviting and form a tapestry of reds, yellows, oranges and golden hues.

If you order an ice cream sundae at Tim’s soda fountain, it will come with syrup, sprinkles, nuts, a cherry and I dunno, maybe a bow and a hat. It would be inviting and lovely, leafy and shaded, with canopies of trees and “well-clipped lawns,” whatever that means.

It goes on at some length. I am done making fun of it. Although I will say this: Rarely has a prose style so suited the human being from which it comes. The first time I saw a video of Tim speaking, and this was well after the incident here, I was shocked. As our dear lost Coozledad said, “That guy makes Fred Rogers look like Dick Butkus.”

Well, I am sure he’s happy. He certainly landed on his feet.

So, Wednesday nearly upon us. Our trip to France grows closer. Starting to check the weather reports, look at local listings. Downloaded the Paris Metro app. Thinking about maybe taking a cooking class. It’s gonna be great.

Of course, I hope it actually happens, too. Delta could shut everything down, but fingers are crossed. Certainly I don’t want to only travel within the borders of this batshit country for another year:

I guess we’ll see. In today’s news: Another billionaire in almost-space, riding in a penis-shaped rocket. Covid stirs anew. Rand Paul got his ass kicked by Dr. Fauci (again). In other words, just another day in late-stage, climate-meltdown capitalism. How’s your week going?

Posted at 8:59 pm in Current events, Same ol' same ol' |
 

79 responses to “Self-editing, or the lack thereof.”

  1. basset said on July 20, 2021 at 9:30 pm

    Dealt with a toll-free-number service rep today who had a rooster a few feet away drowning her out every few minutes. She said she was working from home and it was right by her window. Not the first time I’ve heard a chicken on an 800 call.

    Gotta have some respect for anyone who can work a call center job from home at all, though, let alone in competition with loud and active fowl.

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  2. Deborah said on July 20, 2021 at 9:51 pm

    How can I describe my experience of observing TG without offending anyone? I’ll have to think about that, the hair, the sweater, the clasped hands and the smarm, don’t overlook the smarm. Wow.

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  3. alex said on July 20, 2021 at 10:12 pm

    The idea that the author of such treacly, trite dreck could pen a whole book…

    But of course his book is exactly the same sort of exercise, romanticizing an idyllic conservative America that never really was, and superimposing on it the same kaleidoscopic and leafy filter through which he remembers the faded piss-elegant parts of his dumpy hometown.

    Oh, but wasn’t everything so much better under the robber barons. They had so much grandeur.

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  4. Julie Robinson said on July 20, 2021 at 10:19 pm

    Dear Tim, Timothy, Timmy; once in my youth or younger days, many a moon and many a year ago, the hand of fate was thrust upon me, myself, and I, the daughter and offspring of a journalist, writer of news, to be a high school correspondent; that is to have a monthly, once every four weeks, column and space of my very own self in the local city newspaper of record.

    The remuneration for such missives as I submitted, or dropped off at the august and stately concrete block building across the vista from the Woolco Plaza, was by column inch. Very quickly, using the intelligence and craftiness imbued by my creator, I learned to pad out, or lengthen, each month’s missive. Each school activity was given its own loving attention and no participant’s name neglected to be included, pleasing myself, my fellow schoolmates, and the editor, whose staff was so small he would print every press release submitted.

    Timmy, you’re not in high school anymore.

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  5. Suzanne said on July 20, 2021 at 10:21 pm

    Have you seen how Hannity, McConnell, Scalise, and others have suddenly made statements urging people to get vaccinated?
    A) They talked to attorneys
    B) They realized their anti-van stance was killing off their voters.

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  6. Kim said on July 20, 2021 at 10:39 pm

    Julie, you turned my fury at this terminally awful scribe of the American experience into laughing aloud at his ineptitude. Given your experience of late with Goeglein-level contractors, I stand and applaud you. Keep on keeping on!

    Nancy, your read on him is (as ever) perfection. Thank God for sane, literate people.

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  7. Dexter Friend said on July 21, 2021 at 1:27 am

    Routine stuff here. Remember in “No Country for Old Men” when Josh Brolin’s Lewellen character told his wife he was about to do “somethin’ dumber than hell, but I’m gonna do it…” ? He was taking water to a poor bastard trapped by injuries after a drug war shootout.
    My dumb as hell thing is that I am helping finance a major fix-up on a 2004 vehicle my grandson bought…it’s leaking gas and oil and is just all worn out. He has to have wheels to drive 56 r/t miles 6 days a week, plus scurry about getting his child on weekends and making all his court commitments. He makes good pay but has lots going out in child support and fines and who knows what else. He just told me he has $700 to start with and I said I’ll go the rest.
    Walmart here in Bryan is getting lit-up on Facebook, as they did it…yep, they closed all the registers and forced all customers to self-checkout. I was unable to get my broccoli and my nectarines to scan and had to get a kid to help me, like an idiot I was. I’ll figure it out by next time. Oh, yeah, no bags at my station either, so a kid brought a big stack and left, and they were all stuck together. Disgusting. Self-checkouts have been around for many years but goddammitt, I do not have to use them. Fuck it, I’ll drive to Meijer in Defiance every couple weeks. It’s just a few minutes down the road.
    65,000 screaming basketball fans outside the Fiserv Center in Milwaukee to cheer the Bucks NBA championship, plus a packed arena of course. Quite a mini-Woodstock type scene. No Hendrix.
    I just finished watching 3 weeks of Le Tour de France on Sunday. I watch every year, I love to see the live scenery, the Alps, the villes, the fast downhills, 75 mph at times. I doubt I’ll ever go, so I appreciate the TV coverage. Kind of sad? Nah, it’s the way I roll. Or roll my rollator. 🙂 ‘Sall Good.

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  8. ROGirl said on July 21, 2021 at 5:18 am

    Reminiscing about the idyllic past that never existed, except the original deeds to the houses in those neighborhoods probably contained restrictive covenants to keep them lily white and Christian. My, how things have changed since then.

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  9. alex said on July 21, 2021 at 6:43 am

    Whenever the local press runs a more substantive feature about those neighborhoods, restrictive covenants are indeed among the subjects that come up. In the covenants, the Old Mill area had quite florid language of its own — “the Ethiopian race” is how it described one particular class of people forbidden to own property there. Jews were another, but in the 1950s that changed, and not because covenants were redrawn.

    Developer John Worthman platted an adjacent subdivision and extended the illustrious Old Mill Road into it. (Some jokingly refer to it as the “Gaza Strip.”) There he set aside land for a large synagogue and a Unitarian meeting house and surrounded them with a more modern mix of opulent and upper-middle-class homes and called it Woodhurst. And today it even has its share of residents once referred to as “Ethiopians.”

    Sorry to wreck Timmy’s narrative, but he’s not telling much of a story.

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  10. Suzanne said on July 21, 2021 at 9:04 am

    Here is another cringe worthy guest piece from a professor at the Lutheran Seminary that ran in the J-G in which he basically asserts that Critical Race Theory leads to something akin to the “final solution”

    https://journalgazette.net/opinion/columns/20210702/critical-insight

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  11. Mark P said on July 21, 2021 at 9:38 am

    I didn’t immediately make the connection about TG, so when I read what Nancy quoted, I thought it was a joke in that it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night vein. Then I realized it was legitimate. It reminded me of a self-published Kindle book I downloaded a few weeks ago. I kept trying to read it, but the guy was trying for literary, and seemed to always pick a word that didn’t mean quite what he thought it did. I almost always read a book all the way through, but I just can’t keep reading this one.

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  12. Indiana Jack said on July 21, 2021 at 9:51 am

    By all means, take a cooking class when in France. My wife and I took a one-day class with Le Foodist in Paris in November of 2018. Small group of about 10. The day started with a morning trip to the market with the chef/instructor to buy ingredients. French chef had worked in U.S. restaurants and spoke excellent English. He also knew how to get people involved, cleaning mussels etc., with humor and a light touch. Class went from about 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., concluding with the meal we had prepared together, washed down with some excellent wine. I highly recommend. We are looking for a similar experience in Italy in September.

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  13. Jeff Borden said on July 21, 2021 at 10:13 am

    There is a wonderful open air market for foodies in Paris we visited. I’m sure this isn’t the spelling, but it was something like Rue Moufatard. The food writer for the Charlotte Observer was with us and she went crazy. She also arranged a seven-course French meal for us –the kind where sorbet is served between courses– but it turned out to be one of my least favorite experiences. The food was too rich for my peasant tastes and a pall of cigarette smoke hung over the dining room. (This was long before smoking indoors was banned in France and everyone seemed to have a smoke going.)

    My wife and I are really on the fence about traveling to Florida for a wedding in two weeks. We have been vaccinated since March and are more than happy to wear masks, etc., but the sheer scale of the infections down there is scary in the extreme. The tRump-sucking governor is marketing “Don’t Fauci My Florida” merchandise on his reelection site and has banned schools and businesses from requiring proof of vaccinations, so it’s not like there’s a serious government effort to get goobers vaccinated.

    Meanwhile, a Page One story in today’s NYT may be the first of many to come as the mega-drought continues in the West. A small town in Utah about an hour east of SLC has halted all housing development –despite a super hot market there– because it is running out of water. The conservative, tRump-loving mayor says it just doesn’t make sense to add more homes when existing houses are barely getting enough.

    And so it begins.

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  14. Heather said on July 21, 2021 at 11:35 am

    My favorite museum in Paris is the Musee Carnavalet, which focuses on the history of the city. It’s housed in two beautiful “hotels,” or former residences. Highly recommend.

    Related: This TikTok account is hilarious and endearing in the way it pokes fun at the idea of Paris as a glamorous city in a cheeky but charming way, while also celebrating it. https://www.tiktok.com/@callespralle?

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  15. Deborah said on July 21, 2021 at 11:46 am

    Jeff B, we went to that Rue Mouffetard market street almost every day, we’d buy stuff for picnics in Luxembourg garden. We had to hide the wine bottle though, not allowed in the park. We poured it into metal cups that we bought just for that purpose so you couldn’t see red wine in the cups.

    We rarely went to any restaurants, mostly a cafe in the morning for coffee and a croissant, or some fancy pastry.

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  16. annie said on July 21, 2021 at 12:52 pm

    California does not have a water problem. it has an overpopulation problem. at least 1/3 of the inhabitants have to leave. Then we will have enough water, less traffic, less need to build housing in fire prone areas. (except climate change will march on and we are all doomed anyway)

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  17. Suzanne said on July 21, 2021 at 1:10 pm

    Pelosi rejects Banks & Jordan
    https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/72121-2

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  18. Jeff Borden said on July 21, 2021 at 1:13 pm

    Did any of you Californians ever read “Ecology of Fear” by Mike Davis? It came out in the late 90s, I think, and was an examination of how SoCal came to become the megalopolis it is today. Annie’s comment echoes his assertions that the area was carelessly developed–Malibu Canyon is one of the most fire prone areas in the world– by people who didn’t understand the arid conditions. The book also noted California was coming out of a “wet phase” and reverting to extremely dry climate.

    Prescient stuff.

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  19. Mark P said on July 21, 2021 at 1:24 pm

    Urban/residential uses only account for about 10% of the total water use in California. You could move all the population of LA to Florida and it would barely dent the overall water use. Agriculture is about 40% of the water use. Those figures are from a few years ago, but residential water use has decreased in percentage if anything. Since California is a big national agricultural supplier, California’s water problems are ours, too.

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  20. Sherri said on July 21, 2021 at 1:54 pm

    California could accommodate the number of people without building in wildfire areas if it weren’t so completely allergic to density. Look at the battles being waged against Scott Weiner’s attempts to change land use around transit areas and how hotly those have been resisted.

    The country as a whole has not kept up with the demand for housing, and California is the extreme example.

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  21. Jim Sweeney said on July 21, 2021 at 3:27 pm

    “The tennis courts are a harbinger of continuity …”

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  22. LAMary said on July 21, 2021 at 3:39 pm

    Mouffet is the French Canadian word for skunk.I wonder what Mouffettard means.
    I liked that tennis court line too. It’s all you need to read to get the flavor of the article.

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  23. Sherri said on July 21, 2021 at 4:24 pm

    I bet you could substitute white supremacy and white supremacist in most of Mr Goeglein’s sentences and get to the real gooey center of what makes those neighborhoods so special to him.

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  24. JodiP said on July 21, 2021 at 5:01 pm

    Heather, the Paris tiktok is sooooo good! I am not going to get on le tiktok because I already spend time on Insta and FB. There is some crossover, but unfortunately, not Callespralle…..

    Nancy, I hope you have a wonderful time in Paris! If you are lucky, you can see St. Chapelle when it’s sunny. The stained glass is unbelievable. Indiana Jack @12–that class sounds so much fun!

    Here in Minneapolis the air quality is so bad. It’s very, very hazy from smoke from Canada and the west. I walked the pup last night and it looked slighly foggy outside, but it was the smoke. 🙁

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  25. beb said on July 21, 2021 at 6:11 pm

    Julie’s channeling of Tim Goeglein reminded me of an article I read just yesterday about a lawsuit. The article quoted frequently from the lawsuit and the language was just boggling to me. Instead of saying the five policemen felt threatened by a city sponsored Black Lives Matters art installation the lawyer said the city “created and allowed to exist a harassing, discriminatory, and retaliatory work environment[.]” and “Law enforcement officers, including Plaintiffs, were forced to physically pass and confront the Mural and its offensive, discriminatory, and harassing iconography every time they entered the Palo Alto Police Department.” I know this is lawerese but it just goes on forever. I don’t know how one could read a legal document without their eyes glazing over.

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  26. Dexter Friend said on July 21, 2021 at 8:08 pm

    My brother who rode Paris-Brest-Paris twice and also visited France several other times with his wives on different trips, told me he had a very hard time flying with the French. This was when smoking on planes was encouraged, even. He said the cabins of the planes were absolutely filled with smoke. You likely never saw an anti-cigarette person like my brother. In restaurants, he’d start fake-coughing and hacking and approach smokers and plead his case: asthma, cannot tolerate smoke, and the offender would cease. However, when half a plane-load were French, with Gauloises or Gitanes a-glowin’…a lost cause. Now, I still have to police up cig-butts because when this goofy-ass drug addled neighbor is outta jail (he’s gonna be back out of lockup in 5 short days)he flicks his 4 packs a day worth of butts into my yard, that bastard.

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  27. Jeff Borden said on July 21, 2021 at 9:49 pm

    As a former smoker, I’m amazed and appalled and repelled by how stinky I made myself and my surroundings every time I fired up a Marlboro. These days someone smoking 40 feet in front of me on the sidewalk makes me wish he weren’t there. I can’t remember my last smoke aside from it being outside the house where we were playing poker and it snowing at the time. . .which I think is a good sign that I don’t even think of it any more. Smoking, I think, was absolutely the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

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  28. Dorothy said on July 22, 2021 at 12:26 am

    We talked with a customer service rep last Sunday who had a screaming cat interrupt the call but she blithely went on as if it wasn’t shrieking. After we conducted our business I wanted to ask her if she was heading out to see the vet, the cat sounded like it was in such distress.

    Delta Airlines really screwed us yesterday. Yes I realize much of what happened was not purposely done to mess up our departure for San Diego but I’m allowed to be pissed at them. First we were delayed nearly a half hour leaving Dayton because they didn’t have a crew working that day that could prepare the plane. Not sure what that meant but somehow it impacted the way they ‘started’ the plane up and it also meant we had no airflow inside the plane while we sat at the gate. We only had 45 minutes between the two flights, connecting in Detroit. So when we got to Detroit and had to sit 10 minutes waiting for a crew to lead the plane to the gate, I knew we’d never make the flight to SAN.

    Nonetheless we ran like maniacs from B10 to A20 and I nearly had a seizure, I was breathing so raggedly. The plane was still sitting there, but the door was locked and they’d already given away our seats because they’d overbooked the flight. They acted like we missed the flight because of poor planning on our part. But when another passenger who had been on the Dayton flight with us said “The flight was late getting here from Dayton!” All of a sudden they wanted to help us. We got the last two seats on a 4:50 PM flight to San Diego. So we had to cool our heels for 8 hours in Detroit. What a long day.

    We had ‘comfort zone’ seats on the original San Diego flight; they claimed we should look for an email from Delta, refunding us for the difference in price. So far that hasn’t happened. Believe me, I’ll be pursuing it if it never shows up. I know this kind of thing probably happens every day all over the world but that doesn’t make it any easier to bare.

    That being said, we’re enjoying our first time in California. Everyone’s been very nice.

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  29. Julie Robinson said on July 22, 2021 at 8:24 am

    Dorothy, I’m convinced the airlines have a set of metrics for how egregious their screwing over can get before it will cost them real money, and you fell victim. I don’t trust less than two hours layover, but you often can’t find one at smaller airports. This is why we’re driving to New Orleans come October.

    Jeff B, you don’t mention where in Florida the wedding is. The bad news is that rates are going up, but the good news here in Orlando is that mask wearing is also going up.

    Yesterday was yet another long and difficult day, but it redeemed itself with a spectacular sunset that lasted 45 minutes and kept improving with time. Viewing it over the lake while cooling down in the pool reminded us why we bought this place, and the serenity that awaits us when we finally get finished and settled in. It was a moment of hope.

    And the plumber seems to have evicted Moaning Myrtle, so really, things are getting better.

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  30. Suzanne said on July 22, 2021 at 9:00 am

    Julie, I tend to agree regarding the airlines. We had an incident a few years ago (Delta) in which they gate checked our carry-on luggage for a direct flight, so we agreed thinking it would be fine. But after sitting on the runway for an hour or so, we returned to the gate and were told the flight was canceled. The ticket agent booked us on a later flight to a different airport in the same destination city, but neglected to tell us we were stand-by. Guess what happened? Our luggage was sent on but we didn’t get on the flight. We ended up spending the night in a hotel, sleeping in our underwear, because all our necessities were in our carry-on which they took at the gate, including my husband’s blood pressure meds. Then we had to rebook our rebooked flight to get to the same airport our luggage was sent to. It was awful and I swore never to fly Delta again.

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  31. Mark P said on July 22, 2021 at 9:46 am

    I heard an interview with a Missouri Republican on NPR this morning. He was advocating getting the vaccine (good for him). He said it shouldn’t be politicized, but both sides were doing it (right). He said Kamala Harris refused to get vaccinated during the campaign because it was Trump’s vaccine (what ?). The reporter said she had not heard that. He assured her it was true. After the interview she noted that the vaccine was not publicly available until after the campaign. So, a Republican lied. In other news, the sun rose this morning.

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  32. LAMary said on July 22, 2021 at 9:49 am

    In defense of the airlines I know they are hurting bad for crews. It’s not like prepandemic bad planning. They just don’t have enough workers. Flights get cancelled because there aren’t flight crews available. I don’t have any warm feelings for Delta, but from the perspective of someone who daily reads the job postings on Indeed, Ziprecruiter, LinkedIn, and niche sites I know that hospitality and travel jobs are going unfilled.

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  33. Julie Robinson said on July 22, 2021 at 9:50 am

    My “personal item” is a medium backpack that fits under the seat and always contains meds, extra socks and undies, a large but lightweight scarf, tablet and charger, phone charger, gum and snacks, and puzzles. Ebooks and videos are downloaded on my tablet. Also included these days are wipes, sanitizer, kleenex and paper towels for understocked bathrooms. All needed on some flight or another and learned the hard way.

    News from the rodent king is the transfer of 2000 high paying jobs from California. They’ll spend $800 million too. Barely mentioned: the state is giving them $570 million in tax breaks. Florida: just like Indiana.

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  34. nancy said on July 22, 2021 at 10:11 am

    I have heard the both-sides-opposed-the-vaccine bullshit about Kamala several times today, which makes me think it was the Fox Daily Memo. I’m sure she said something similar, but it was probably something more nuanced. I know I said that if Trump triumphantly announced a vaccine on October 30, I wouldn’t go near it. I believe Fauci and virtually any other world leader in a western democracy, but I don’t believe him.

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  35. nancy said on July 22, 2021 at 10:12 am

    And…bingo.

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  36. Mark P said on July 22, 2021 at 10:24 am

    In other words, Kamala Harris was being entirely reasonable, and basing her words on Trump’s unbroken string of lies about everything under the sun. And there’s that thing about the sun again.

    But, to be fair, right wingers don’t do anything that requires comprehension and rational thought. It goes from, “I need more than Trump’s word on it when it becomes available” to “I didn’t take it because it’s Trump’s vaccine.” Entirely too subtle a difference.

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  37. Jeff Borden said on July 22, 2021 at 10:42 am

    Julie,

    We’re flying into West Palm Beach, staying with my vaccinated brother-in-law in Fort Pierce, and the wedding is in Jupiter. The ceremony will be outdoors, but I’m assuming the reception will be inside. I see Gov. DeathSantis is now urging people to get the shot. . .days after he began marketing “Don’t Fauci My Florida” merchandise on his website. . .but how many will suffer and die because of politicians and media hacks lying about the virus and the vaccine?

    Generally, I’m more than ready for younger leadership in Congress, but I give Nancy Pelosi props for continuing to beat the hapless Kevin McCarthy like a government mule. She torpedoed his plans to place Jockstrap Gym Jordan and Jim Banks on her Jan. 6 investigation committee. While McCarthy sheds his crocodile tears, there’s now a much better chance of the truth coming out. If we’re lucky, really lucky, we might even get to watch McCarthy, Jordan, Banks and other traitors forced to testify on the roles they played on that horrible day.

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  38. ROGirl said on July 22, 2021 at 11:36 am

    Mark P, I was listening to that interview driving to work and knew the guy was just full of shit. He started out reasonable and veered off into lala land to set up some false equivalency scenario between anti vaxxers and the fox lie machine blast.

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  39. Jeff Borden said on July 22, 2021 at 12:56 pm

    Isn’t it time, Nancy Nall Derringer, for you to take up the mantle of Leonard Pinth-Garnell (the snooty critic played by Dan Aykroyd on SNL) of “Bad Cinema” fame and begin reviewing horrible writing by people who think they’re doing it beautifully?

    Mitch and Timmy G. are hardly alone in thrusting putrid prose into our faces. What of Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens, who occupy such lofty posts at the NYT? Or Gary Abernathy in the WP, the small town Ohio twit whose latest bowel movement begs us to stop insulting tRump voters and start listening to the poor dears?

    Yearly awards could be bestowed. Certainly the Albom Award would be the equivalent of an Oscar, but maybe the (Jonah) Goldberg Award for best performance by someone trying so desperately to be cool (ooh, a reference to “The Simpsons) while remaining a nerdling. The possibilities are endless.

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  40. Mark P said on July 22, 2021 at 3:25 pm

    ROGirl, I was so disgusted with the Mo Republican that I changed the station halfway though the interview, but then changed back so see whether the interviewer would correct him on his bullshit. She didn’t do it during the interview, but, I assume, after she was able to do a fact check.

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  41. LAMary said on July 22, 2021 at 4:51 pm

    Some idiot on FB shared an article about the US women’s soccer team losing the the Swedish team because their minds were on BLM and not in the game. They took a knee before the game, as do many teams including the Swedish team who beat them. When I pointed that out I was told that the Americans were “cocky.”. More news of stupid stuff: my friend Chris who is an infection preventionist in Jacksonville posted a video of a fiery train wreck to describe her job right now. Rick DeSantis isn’t making any effort to slow the rate of new Covid infections. Chris is wishing she never left CA.

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  42. Sherri said on July 22, 2021 at 6:04 pm

    Hey Dorothy, just talked to a friend who had a worse airline vacation experience than you! He and his wife were coming back from the east coast, and had to change their plans last minute because their daughter was rear-ended when she was driving to meet them on vacation. So instead of flying out of DC on Alaska, they needed to fly out of Philly, and Alaska rebooked them on American, a code share partner. It was a nightmare.

    The flight was delayed. They push off from the gate. They return to the gate to remove a drunk belligerent passenger who had smuggled booze onto the plane. Push off again. Back to the gate to remove a family with a medical emergency (friends says child with a screaming tantrum). Push off. Back to refuel, because they need to reroute around a line of thunderstorms. Push off. Oops, crew times out. Meanwhile, my friends have figure out that this plane is going nowhere, and are busily trying to find a hotel room. Nothing closer than downtown Philly.

    No food or water has been provided to passengers during all this. Flight is postponed til next day, and the scramble is on to find places to stay. My friends have the room in downtown Philly, and now the challenge is getting there. Finally get a ride, get to the hotel about 1 in the morning, collapse for a few hours, try again in the morning.

    Board the plane again, new flight attendants, and they sit there. Flight attendants keep saying, crew is on the way, but passengers are getting pretty antsy by now. Flight attendants know nothing of previous history, my friend finally tells one of them, you’ve been hung out to dry, these people are not happy, I suggest you call the gate agent and get someone to take the heat for you. It took until 2:30 in the afternoon before they took off, and the pilot and copilot told them they had been pulled off another flight.

    (My friend’s daughter is okay, though her car was totaled.)

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  43. Sherri said on July 22, 2021 at 6:24 pm

    And, a reminder about why the airlines are so short staffed: they spent their taxpayer bailout on shareholders, not employees.

    https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1418312141757681665

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  44. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 22, 2021 at 6:38 pm

    One thing’s for sure about Mr. Goeglein’s column: no one has claimed those aren’t his own words.

    Third trip in ten days to Indy, and short-term memory problems are surely a fascinating challenge to work with. We have lists and post-its all over the house here now, but I had to explain our need to have a roofer come three times in as many hours this afternoon. The mercy is he’s mellowed towards me in recent years, and has said emphatically he’s content to let me handle business matters that just a few years ago he’d have flown into a rage over my even asking about.

    As family history geek, the good part has been to head off the still occasional eruption with a distracting query about events of the 1930s & 40s. I can rake the embers of those memories and get an illuminating flare of delight and conversation in complete sentences with the right question. The first answer is always “oh Jeff, that was a long time ago.” But a little patience and letting the silence hang, and almost always there’s a “wait a minute, wait a minute . . . I think . . .” and something wonderful comes to light.

    Next, replacing the water heater; I need some REALLY distracting memory kindling to get through that one!

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  45. Deborah said on July 22, 2021 at 6:44 pm

    Oh no, I have to fly next Saturday and I’m already nervous about it because of the uptick in Covid cases, and now I have to anticipate all kinds of mayhem related to scheduling and whatnot. Really not looking forward to that day. I still haven’t decided if I want to take the shuttle van to the Albuquerque airport or the Railrunner train, then bus to the airport. The problem with the train is that weekends, it doesn’t run as often so I would have to leave way earlier than I need to make my flight. But the shuttle is probably going to be crowded with tourists heading back home, and it will be cheek by jowl in the van. I wish I had another option, but I don’t. Both stink. And what in the world is going on with all of the unruly passengers? What a pain.

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  46. alex said on July 22, 2021 at 7:07 pm

    Jeff tmmo–

    Pretty sure it’s authentic Goeglein prose. If he couldn’t do any better than that, no wonder he was stealing.

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  47. Julie Robinson said on July 22, 2021 at 7:23 pm

    Jefftmmo, could you get him out of the house on an excursion while the water heater gets replaced?

    I’m glad to be staying put for a while, no planes for me. Ran a few errands today and saw over 75% masked, which I found heartening since it’s voluntary.

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  48. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 22, 2021 at 8:35 pm

    Our excursions are short, and medical. Nah, it’ll work out. He gets less angry with me, and more briefly, than he does with his daughter.

    Full confession: I ran the aforementioned essay in full, and pieces that made me cock an eyebrow, through all my tools. Sadly, I was hoping for a plagiarism hit. But nope, it’s all his! Right down to “autumnal and kaleidoscopic colors are inviting and form a tapestry of reds, yellows, oranges and golden hues.”

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  49. Sherri said on July 22, 2021 at 8:38 pm

    Next campaign, the opponent should refer to the governor of Florida as Ron DeathSentence.

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  50. beb said on July 23, 2021 at 2:32 am

    Speaking of women’s sports, NYT reports that the Norway woman’s handball team was fined for not wearing those skimpy bikini bottoms.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/sports/norway-beach-handball-team.html

    Sherri: Or call him Darth Santis.

    I wonder how long it is going to take for Republicans to get it through their heads that everything is recorded. You can’t lie and hope to get away with it any more.

    OK, as long as Chris Cillizza has a job Republicans will continued to be able to lie without consequences.

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  51. alex said on July 23, 2021 at 7:35 am

    Goeglein’s latest reminded me of a hysterically funny Evelyn Waugh novel, Scoop, in which there’s a contributor to a newspaper given to overblown prose, and who wrote this memorable line:

    “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.”

    Writer is a distant cousin of a famous writer. Publisher mistakes the former for the latter and sends him off as a war correspondent. More hilarity ensues.

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  52. LAMary said on July 23, 2021 at 10:10 am

    I love that sentence, Alex. I’ll try to work it into conversation. It reminds me of the alternative to “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” sentence we used in typing class in high school: “Quickly wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim.”

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  53. JodiP said on July 23, 2021 at 11:36 am

    I am catching up on Fresh Air episodes. The two I listened to yesterday were such a contrast.

    The first was an interview with NYT reporter Adam Goldman describing an undercover effort, led by an avid Trump supporter, that trained conservatives in espionage techniques and sent them to dig up dirt on progressives. Some operations were aimed at discrediting perceived enemies of Trump when he was president, including his national security advisor, H.R. McMaster.

    The second was a gorgeous interview with Jon Batiste, who is the bandleader of ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.’ He joined from his home piano where he plays music he wrote for the Pixar movie ‘Soul’ and songs from his album ‘We Are.’ We’ll also hear his rendition of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ and the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice.” His joy in the music was so beautiful!

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  54. Deborah said on July 23, 2021 at 3:11 pm

    Jodi, that Fresh Air interview with Adam Goldman was fascinating, it had a lot of twists and turns, it will be interesting to hear more about the infiltration of Democratic orgs by conservatives practicing spy craft.

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  55. LAMary said on July 23, 2021 at 4:46 pm

    I’ve listened to the Jon Batiste interview twice. It’s brilliant.

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  56. ROGirl said on July 23, 2021 at 5:45 pm

    Traffic was backed up to a grinding halt on the expressway this afternoon. I made the mistake of not exiting when I should have. It was only while I was stuck inching forward that I heard on the radio there had been a road rage shooting incident a few hours earlier and a section of the expressway had been closed. I finally got to the next off ramp, got home about an hour later than usual.

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  57. Julie Robinson said on July 23, 2021 at 7:02 pm

    Jon Batiste is joy in human form. He’s brilliant and thoughtful, both musically and in the rest of his life. I wonder if this was a repeat because the topics sound familiar, will try to snatch 47 uninterrupted minutes and listen.

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  58. Deborah said on July 23, 2021 at 8:07 pm

    Someone on Twitter quipped, after someone else said Cleveland had picked the lamest name for their baseball team, that there are 2 teams in MLB named after socks. I thought that was hilarious.

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  59. Deborah said on July 23, 2021 at 8:51 pm

    I keep getting ear splitting alerts on my iPhone warning about flash floods in the area. After the first one I got, LB and I walked over to the river and there was barely a trickle, so it hasn’t hit here yet. It’s been thundering all afternoon, and overcast, but hardly any rain.

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  60. Connie said on July 23, 2021 at 11:22 pm

    ROgirl, right after reading your comment I saw the headline: angry driver on I696 shoots tow truck because it was in rhe way, ….westbound lanes shut down. I knew right away that was your story.

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  61. Dexter Friend said on July 24, 2021 at 2:13 am

    As I was nearing the Cleveland ballpark when I went weekends during the 1990s, I’d always cross the Hope Memorial Bridge over the Cuyahoga on Carnegie, where stand The Guardians of Traffic. I was always amazed at the sculptures, never saw anything like them, either side of the bridge, holding it up. Huge, Awesome. https://tinyurl.com/ykxfeovq
    So today when I heard the new name for the American League Baseball Club will be The Cleveland Guardians I was elated. Perfect. I don’t give a damn what the naysayers said and are saying, the choice is pure perfection, and that’s hard to top.

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  62. David C said on July 24, 2021 at 8:11 am

    I was sort of “what the” when I heard the Indians’ new name. When I heard the backstory I warmed to it. As long as there is a Utah Jazz no team should ever be told their name is ridiculous.

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  63. basset said on July 24, 2021 at 8:43 am

    That, and the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.

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  64. David C said on July 24, 2021 at 8:55 am

    Minor leagues are exempt from strange name scrutiny. Gotta goose up the merch sales somehow.

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  65. beb said on July 24, 2021 at 11:51 am

    The Cleveland Guardians did seem like an odd choice for a name but if they wee named after the statue that seems like a good reason. It could have been worse, they could have called themselves the Cleveland Mistakes.

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  66. Snarkworth said on July 24, 2021 at 12:16 pm

    Speaking of traffic snarls, the PA Turnpike was closed for seven hours last week after a fatal car-motorcycle collision. The perpetrator was a Rep. candidate for governor whose car was seen speeding away with the entire motorcycle wedged into the grille.

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  67. Joe Kobiela said on July 24, 2021 at 12:31 pm

    My vote was for the Cleveland Steamers.
    Pilot Joe

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  68. alex said on July 24, 2021 at 1:09 pm

    In all of my years of gardening, this year is my first experience with tomato blight. In the course of about a week my plants started turning crispy from the bottom up. So I looked up online what might be the problem and it’s obviously a fungal issue. So I went out and bought copper spray and this morning picked off all of the distressed limbs, which was quite a chore. They gave almost no resistance whatsoever but it was a workout reaching for all of them. Hoping we can salvage this year’s crop. Quite a lot of fruit on them but the stalks and vines bend as if they’re hollow. And my pepper plants look horribly distressed too so I sprayed them with neem oil.

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  69. tajalli said on July 24, 2021 at 1:23 pm

    Thanks for the Guardians bridge link, Dexter. Scrolling through google’s photo collection, I noticed that each guardian was holding a vehicle: carriage, sedan car, train, hay wagon, truck, bus (ie, more than four) so there must be a set of guardians at each end of the bridge, right? Also, loved the zoo’s blue elephant to circumvent political favoritism.

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  70. David C said on July 24, 2021 at 1:36 pm

    I think the Cleveland Spiders, after Cleveland’s old NL team, was the sentimental favorite. The Cleveland River Fires was the favorite with the smartasses.

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  71. Deborah said on July 24, 2021 at 2:18 pm

    Is it just me or are drivers getting worse? Just a drive to the grocery store can be terrifying. There are a lot of tourists in Santa Fe right now, so I’m blaming them.

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  72. Little Bird said on July 24, 2021 at 2:29 pm

    I’m absolutely not a sports fan, but the brouhaha over the changing of the name of team seems ridiculous.

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  73. Julie Robinson said on July 24, 2021 at 3:47 pm

    Some 10 or so years ago hubby’s high school changed its mascot from an ethnic slur for natives to the Legends. We all scratched our heads, but it came from students, so hard to argue. But wouldn’t you know it, there are still people bitching about it. D is an alum and is glad about the change.

    Our big excitement here was the arrival of The Claw, a special truck the city sends for large amounts of yard waste. My mom had so much fun watching them maneuver it with great precision. We filled up the whole truck with items we had to pull out to make way for the new landscaping they’re making us put in. It’s costing a small fortune and of course it’s a *lovely* time to be working outdoors.

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  74. David C said on July 24, 2021 at 5:39 pm

    My high school changed its mascot from Scotties (the dog) to Fighting Scots. It was a testosterone fueled change so they bashed it through without too much complaining. I guess a guy in a dress is more manly for the football team than a persistent terrier.

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  75. Deborah said on July 24, 2021 at 5:59 pm

    Charlotte, if you’re out there, do you know these people? https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_60fc3a4be4b0d2a22d4bd136/amp

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  76. Dexter Friend said on July 25, 2021 at 2:24 am

    tajalli, yeah, several sets of guardians of traffic. A few times I rode a bicycle over that bridge, but way too dangerous, sometimes packs of pedestrians made me stop and if I got to gawking too much at the guardians, I’d nearly spill off into a fatal encounter with a car. As a baseball nut now for probably 65 years, I loved going to Cleveland. I’d have a bike strapped to my van or car, park for free by The Flats, and take sweet rides around downtown and down by the lakefront before and after games. Cleveland is the best, easiest city to bike in on weekends, so easy to navigate streets when cars are spaced out, no problems. Physical problems took me off bikes 7 years ago, but memories are great.

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  77. Deborah said on July 25, 2021 at 10:01 am

    This monsoon season in northern NM has been fantastic lately, it rains almost every afternoon now, some days not much, but every bit helps. I hope it keeps going through the summer.

    Another reason to complain about my upcoming travel day: my TSA pre status has expired. I got a notice about it via email a couple of months ago, I went to the website to renew, but after filling out all the info, it wouldn’t let me continue to the next step. I tried for days, then I got nervous that it was a scam operation, just trying to get my info. Same thing happened to my husband. When I get back to Chicago, I’ll see if I can get enrolled.

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  78. basset said on July 25, 2021 at 11:15 am

    Sports teams at the long-closed high school in Epsom, Indiana, we’re called the Salts.

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  79. susan said on July 25, 2021 at 12:25 pm

    I wonder what the teams are called at Cretin High School, near St Paul, MN.

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