When I rant that the mainstream media are literally harmful to nation (world too, I suppose), well, Baker’s shit is just one of the latest examples in an endless, nigh-infinite series.
As I also rant, reality has finally caught up to the Comintern’s ancient riff that the west is decadent. Now I’m thinking they’re somewhere between dead on and too accurate.
Then again, it’s the old line; if you let them, they will. We did then they did.
Least I can do is end with a laugh so this, wait, I think it’s funny, maybe not?
That Adam Tooze post is great, but watch out for the comments, some jerk named Steve, his regular stomping-grounds being temporarily closed, couldn't STFU.
"But that force is there, a blunt, crude, simple force of body on body. It is there in reserve."
That's fascism. That's straight up good ol' homestyle fascism. The State wielding the threat of violence they're solely entitled to. (Well, not "solely", exactly, as I recall the vicious assault on protesters by the chuds as the police watched... then arrested the protesters.)
The thing that pissed me off was the jerk NYPD higher-up holding up a chain. "They brought chains! Proof of evil commie intent!". It's a bike chain, shitferbrains.
Hard to believe even Peggy Noonan would pull a real life Hello Fellow Kids.
The follow up to the Peter Baker brou-ha-ha is his son Theo, a student, sent an incredibly disrespectful email to a Black Stanford professor, Hakeem Jefferson, who had criticized his dad. That exchange then went viral. Young Baker told the prof he was “better than this.” Is there a more condescending phrase in existence? It not only criticizes the position taken by the person you are addressing, it presumes you understand that person better than they know themselves.
So now Baker pere et fils are both getting dragged online. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving family.
One of the most disturbing American cultural trends of the last 35 years is the penchant to build family dynasties in which the offspring inherit the parent's job. The results are predictable as the offspring assume the position with a sense of entitlement and having done none of the legwork that got the parent where he or she was. Luke Russert being implanted in his daddy's role simply because Tim was his daddy, or George W. Bush becoming president because his daddy was before him. Catastrophe is inevitable, on scales both large and small. But we're loving us some royalty these days, and we're apparently willing to give up everything just to get some.
Hell, the hellishness small towns may descend into is exactly because those of modest wealth and power hold onto their positions and economic niches like pit bulls. The lie that you will automatically socially advance because of your hard work is disproven by local dynasties.
For that pederast Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick and his clones to advance, they had to meet cute a rich patron.
Thus, JD Vance: whom, by the way, someone, perhaps the sassy gay friend that Wonderful Mr.Thiel is not, should tell to use less eyeliner.
In other news today, yet another Boeing Eyeliner came within an eyelash of disaster. Boeing's continued troubles are raising eyebrows as regulators turn a critical eye into the company's operations.
Now dammit, we have regular ol' eyes, is this slander necessary? It's rat eyes, boss. Them pizza thieving bastards have tiny eyes, not our full, long eyelashed peepers.
My little town manages to mostly avoid the local family dynasty thing by having a constant influx of people from New York and New Jersey who move here to become Big Fish in our Little Pond. When I ran the radio station here, I watched a constant parade of these knuckleheads who would come in and think they absolutely knew better than the local rubes when it came to, well, anything and everything.
When I left the station after dragging it out of debt and into the black for the first time in 20 years, two of these morons took over because they KNEW I wasn't doing it right. In less than 6 months it was back in heavy debt and losing $2000 a month.
We saw the same thing, except it was folks from Florida, convinced they were smarter than hillbillies: the Bush boom brought an exceptional wave of the arrogant: the Crash of '08 damped the inmigration down, a bit: and Covid has fueled a real estate boom that must surely crash...at least, I always assumed...
We may be forgiven for referring to 'em as "Floridiots"...
"Hell, the hellishness small towns may descend into is exactly because those of modest wealth and power hold onto their positions and economic niches like pit bulls. The lie that you will automatically socially advance because of your hard work is disproven by local dynasties."
And the offspring were fucking hideous. One landed in the governor's office and proceeded to shit all over his father's legacy. The other landed on CNN simply by virtue of his brother being governor. And both got turfed out because neither could manage to steer clear of their own douchebaggery.
I think one of the big intra-group wars on the Right is the "populists" versus the kingmakers who've been insisting CEOs be allowed to do whatever they want for the last 40 years.
"Rabble" is the perfect word. The kid's arrogance was astronomical, and I doubt he would have addressed a white male professor with the same tone.
The sheer horror others who had come up through the academic system were expressing at the level of condescension required for a student to address a professor by his first name was something to behold.
In a previous life as a magazine editor, I would occasionally buy photos for the magazine cover or to fill in where authors had been unable to supply any. This naturally led to all kinds of professional photographers wanting to be in my Rolodex, including one guy who was famous for putting dead fish on coat hangers to "pose" them in the middle of heroic leaps as they fought an out-of-focus angler in the background.
One afternoon, he called the offices to complain that I hadn't bought any of his pictures. He got my art director on the phone and started whining to her about the situation. She was on the other side of the room from me with PhotoDude on speaker, doing her best to kindly fend him off. He finally blurts out "Don't you know who I am!?!?!"
To which she responded "I think that question answers itself." And then she hung up on him.
It's only older students (40-50) who ever call me by my first name. I never say anything about how I prefer to be addressed, that just seems to be how it works.
His arrogance is damn high, and I suspect some of that comes via his splash into the public eye via him questioning the now-former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne's Alzheimer research. He was briefly all over the news, as a freshman. That kind of thing could put your head in the clouds. No two ways about it, that exchange with Prof. Jefferson was quite abysmal.
Since I don’t tweet or xeet or whatever it’s called now, I rely on Roy’s reputation for accuracy to accept that Xitter has some good uses, along with the fascist propaganda. This is the country that has accepted the Supreme Court’s decision that money equals speech, so I guess we’re lucky Musk hasn’t yet figured out how to charge users by the word.
". . . I guess we’re lucky Musk hasn’t yet figured out how to charge users by the word."
Yet. His latest atrocity is making sure that people who you've blocked can see your Xits anyway. I know he did this because too many people were blocking *him*. Only a matter of time before he boils a bunny.
"Bunny boiler" is a great phrase that deserves wider use, I'll apply it right now to the Governor of South Dakota: "That Kristi, she's a real bunny-boiler."
Not hard to understand why college students would disdain the author of encomiums to Ronald Reagan, who has been dead longer than some of them have been alive.
We grew up with his album Pure Delight, which included a version of that song slightly different from (and, IMHO, better than) the one in that clip. ("I'm Anatole of Paris/My small frou-frous/Make heavy news/ From Fifth Avenue casements/to Orbach's basements").
Oh little bunny Jebus, have I been waiting for to return from your vacay (welcome back, btw!) -- it was the week that the US Zio's lost all credibility & Biden may have lost the fucking election by alienating every one of the 18–35 year-olds who vote Dem. It's tough to sell people on "We're Not the F-word" when you're enabling said Fascism twice as hard & twice as fast, with a much bigger budget.
I guess we still have enough primaries yet to come for voters to vote "uncommitted" or for whatever micro-Dem candidates are still on their state's ballots to let the DNC know they're headed for disaster if the course remains unchecked.
[Yes, you can all yell at me now. It is my & only my fault disaster is imminent...]
I thought maybe one throwaway line, like, "Look, I know it's hard seeing kids killed, and you want it to stop, but.." (don't ask me how to finish that sentence, please, genocide-justifying isn't in my skill set). But no, nothing. Not even the tiniest olive branch offered, which I understand is a metaphor that comes straight outta Palestine.
Meh, taking any position on the Israeli Intifada would lose the election. Attempting to mold the bowl of jellyfish that is the voters who see an election as a special episode of The Masked Singer into a "winning coalition" is a fool's errand. Rather than make demands that will be ignored and worry about "complicity" at this point in our history, Biden is trying to mitigate damage. Look, we all have to grapple with the chance that American democracy, like a turkey staring at the sky in the rain, may be too stupid to live.
It was just needlessly insulting. This shouldn't have been that hard to do. Acknowledge that we all feel horror at what we're seeing transpire in Gaza, acknowledge that among the protesters there are many who mean well, say you're working hard to bring about peace, sign the fuck off. There's probably a standard speech in the White House library, the patronizing one that elder politicians ALWAYS direct at young activists. Nobody's expecting him to sign on to "Divest Now!" but he also didn't need to ratify every lying Republican talking point, as if that ever does anything except help the Goddamn Republicans.
Also totally agree about "too stupid to live", should be printed on the fucking flag.
And the fact that it was so maladroit tells me this is Biden speaking from the heart, it's not the product of wordsmithing by the political consultants. He really does just hate student protesters, in fact that's what he said back when he was in college himself, he called them "assholes" then and it's clear he still believes this.
I have no Idea which maladroit statement Biden made, but what I scraped together shows no olive branches, just affirming a right to protest and condemning violence. The bare minimum. He will lose some votes over this, but he'd lose a lot more going into the weeds of who shoved who first. If you think he's still that asshole from Scranton he probably is, but he might be a bit more. There is no way to address the demonstrations that doesn't lose votes. He's likely making a cold calculation, along with how much shit from Israel he's willing to eat for a cease fire that may not come until Bibi is satisfied with the body count.
Thanks. I could use another!
Consider it authorized.
The Workers Coordinating Committee has met and approved leave whenever he needs it for Comrade Edroso.
Somehow, I've always felt like I needed another vacation after my vacation...
Mandatory chaser to Noonan’s toxins:
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-280-the-state-as-blunt
When I rant that the mainstream media are literally harmful to nation (world too, I suppose), well, Baker’s shit is just one of the latest examples in an endless, nigh-infinite series.
As I also rant, reality has finally caught up to the Comintern’s ancient riff that the west is decadent. Now I’m thinking they’re somewhere between dead on and too accurate.
Then again, it’s the old line; if you let them, they will. We did then they did.
Least I can do is end with a laugh so this, wait, I think it’s funny, maybe not?
https://whowhatwhy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image1-copy-18.jpg
That Adam Tooze post is great, but watch out for the comments, some jerk named Steve, his regular stomping-grounds being temporarily closed, couldn't STFU.
Mom told me to ignore him so I try to oh my god I just fucked up replying to this!!
Is that Steve from Wisconsin?
That's where Steve B from, yeah...
Longtime listener, first-time commenter!
I always hear that with a Lon Guyland accent...brain..can't..hear..it in Wisconsinese......Norman, coordinate!
I'm callin' in ta talk about DA BEARS.
Ahhh, thank you! Voice reference established!
"But that force is there, a blunt, crude, simple force of body on body. It is there in reserve."
That's fascism. That's straight up good ol' homestyle fascism. The State wielding the threat of violence they're solely entitled to. (Well, not "solely", exactly, as I recall the vicious assault on protesters by the chuds as the police watched... then arrested the protesters.)
Tooze’s hands are slightly tied in view of the employer for his day job.
OTOH, his uncle was literally a commie spy so, you know, he has huge compliance issues.
But the contrast with what Noonan pulled out of her ass…
Oh, and reminder that the Columbia situation cascaded from Ilhan Omar's daughter being arrested and expelled from Barnard for protesting: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68851168
The thing that pissed me off was the jerk NYPD higher-up holding up a chain. "They brought chains! Proof of evil commie intent!". It's a bike chain, shitferbrains.
Yeah, a bike chain and lock you can evidently purchase FROM THE COLLEGE ITSELF on its website.
AHA! The Commies are IN THE BUILDING!
Hard to believe even Peggy Noonan would pull a real life Hello Fellow Kids.
The follow up to the Peter Baker brou-ha-ha is his son Theo, a student, sent an incredibly disrespectful email to a Black Stanford professor, Hakeem Jefferson, who had criticized his dad. That exchange then went viral. Young Baker told the prof he was “better than this.” Is there a more condescending phrase in existence? It not only criticizes the position taken by the person you are addressing, it presumes you understand that person better than they know themselves.
So now Baker pere et fils are both getting dragged online. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving family.
One of the most disturbing American cultural trends of the last 35 years is the penchant to build family dynasties in which the offspring inherit the parent's job. The results are predictable as the offspring assume the position with a sense of entitlement and having done none of the legwork that got the parent where he or she was. Luke Russert being implanted in his daddy's role simply because Tim was his daddy, or George W. Bush becoming president because his daddy was before him. Catastrophe is inevitable, on scales both large and small. But we're loving us some royalty these days, and we're apparently willing to give up everything just to get some.
Absolutely accurate. Great wealth and power are self-perpetuating.
Hell, the hellishness small towns may descend into is exactly because those of modest wealth and power hold onto their positions and economic niches like pit bulls. The lie that you will automatically socially advance because of your hard work is disproven by local dynasties.
For that pederast Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick and his clones to advance, they had to meet cute a rich patron.
Thus, JD Vance: whom, by the way, someone, perhaps the sassy gay friend that Wonderful Mr.Thiel is not, should tell to use less eyeliner.
But he has little tiny pig eyes -- how else is he going to make them pop?
Does anyone else see “eyeliner” and think “just another Boeing travesty”?
In other news today, yet another Boeing Eyeliner came within an eyelash of disaster. Boeing's continued troubles are raising eyebrows as regulators turn a critical eye into the company's operations.
Well, meth is one rural method..
Keeps the dentists in business, helps the local economy.
Now dammit, we have regular ol' eyes, is this slander necessary? It's rat eyes, boss. Them pizza thieving bastards have tiny eyes, not our full, long eyelashed peepers.
My little town manages to mostly avoid the local family dynasty thing by having a constant influx of people from New York and New Jersey who move here to become Big Fish in our Little Pond. When I ran the radio station here, I watched a constant parade of these knuckleheads who would come in and think they absolutely knew better than the local rubes when it came to, well, anything and everything.
When I left the station after dragging it out of debt and into the black for the first time in 20 years, two of these morons took over because they KNEW I wasn't doing it right. In less than 6 months it was back in heavy debt and losing $2000 a month.
We saw the same thing, except it was folks from Florida, convinced they were smarter than hillbillies: the Bush boom brought an exceptional wave of the arrogant: the Crash of '08 damped the inmigration down, a bit: and Covid has fueled a real estate boom that must surely crash...at least, I always assumed...
We may be forgiven for referring to 'em as "Floridiots"...
We called them "meth-addled asshats", so that's not so bad.
"Hell, the hellishness small towns may descend into is exactly because those of modest wealth and power hold onto their positions and economic niches like pit bulls. The lie that you will automatically socially advance because of your hard work is disproven by local dynasties."
We call this "South Carolina."
"too small for a republic, too large for an insane asylum"
Ken Burns represent!
Some Cuomos come (cuome?) to mind.
And the offspring were fucking hideous. One landed in the governor's office and proceeded to shit all over his father's legacy. The other landed on CNN simply by virtue of his brother being governor. And both got turfed out because neither could manage to steer clear of their own douchebaggery.
Written like a native New Yorker
Coupla Jabronis, they were.
I think one of the big intra-group wars on the Right is the "populists" versus the kingmakers who've been insisting CEOs be allowed to do whatever they want for the last 40 years.
Right? How is newspaper reporter an inherited position? Baby Baker should try branching out before riding Daddy's coattails.
That kid is a pip.
How nice the old man is training him in contempt for the rabble.
"Rabble" is the perfect word. The kid's arrogance was astronomical, and I doubt he would have addressed a white male professor with the same tone.
The sheer horror others who had come up through the academic system were expressing at the level of condescension required for a student to address a professor by his first name was something to behold.
DON'T YOU KNOW WHO MY FATHER IS
If we didn't before, we do now lol.
In a previous life as a magazine editor, I would occasionally buy photos for the magazine cover or to fill in where authors had been unable to supply any. This naturally led to all kinds of professional photographers wanting to be in my Rolodex, including one guy who was famous for putting dead fish on coat hangers to "pose" them in the middle of heroic leaps as they fought an out-of-focus angler in the background.
One afternoon, he called the offices to complain that I hadn't bought any of his pictures. He got my art director on the phone and started whining to her about the situation. She was on the other side of the room from me with PhotoDude on speaker, doing her best to kindly fend him off. He finally blurts out "Don't you know who I am!?!?!"
To which she responded "I think that question answers itself." And then she hung up on him.
It was glorious.
You're that guy from Adam Tooze's substack
Please, no autographs.
You looked great in that tux at the Met Gala.
At my school the students usually just use the Professors last name sometimes with a Mr.
It's only older students (40-50) who ever call me by my first name. I never say anything about how I prefer to be addressed, that just seems to be how it works.
His arrogance is damn high, and I suspect some of that comes via his splash into the public eye via him questioning the now-former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne's Alzheimer research. He was briefly all over the news, as a freshman. That kind of thing could put your head in the clouds. No two ways about it, that exchange with Prof. Jefferson was quite abysmal.
(Edited for punctuation! Proofread first...)
Whoops, I some how posted the same thing twice, and it wasn't a good enough comment for that
Well there are
Bless your heart and you do you
"bless your heart"? "BLESS YOUR HEART"??? That's cultural appropriation!!
Well there are
Bless your heart and you do you
This is great, Roy . They used to call these "think pieces'.
I think.
I thought that " Ill Wind" thing was follow up to an evening of Street Tacos and cheap beer. I like your definition too!
Glad you're back! Evidently, it's best I have somewhere to go vent in the morning. That's what the staff is saying.
"They used to call these "think pieces'." Those were the days, eh?
"Think pieces... I resemble that remoick"
These days, my thinking mostly comes in pieces, like a sofa from Ikea.
I got the Ikea chiropractor's table kit but it was so confusing to assemble that I wrenched my back.
You must have used the wrong wrench — didn't one of those little crankie dealies come with the set?
It came with an Allen wrench, but his name is Bern not Allen so he couldn't use it
It's no wonder they've fallen out of fashion-
Thinking used to be more popular.
"Salivate when they ring the bell" is quicker, and in today's fast-moving attention-based economy, quickness is everything.
And you knew who you were then / goils were goils and men were men....
Must have been a good vacation. That was a good one!
Thanks and yes.
Since I don’t tweet or xeet or whatever it’s called now, I rely on Roy’s reputation for accuracy to accept that Xitter has some good uses, along with the fascist propaganda. This is the country that has accepted the Supreme Court’s decision that money equals speech, so I guess we’re lucky Musk hasn’t yet figured out how to charge users by the word.
". . . I guess we’re lucky Musk hasn’t yet figured out how to charge users by the word."
Yet. His latest atrocity is making sure that people who you've blocked can see your Xits anyway. I know he did this because too many people were blocking *him*. Only a matter of time before he boils a bunny.
"Bunny boiler" is a great phrase that deserves wider use, I'll apply it right now to the Governor of South Dakota: "That Kristi, she's a real bunny-boiler."
You can take the boy out of South Africa, but ya can't take the South Africa....
Musk IS a big talker, QED.
I'd advise abandoning Xitter now, as I understand Enlo is going to reinstate Nick Fuentes' account. Hilarity will not ensue.
When I see "Ill Wind" this comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlLnzXeiRCs
Not hard to understand why college students would disdain the author of encomiums to Ronald Reagan, who has been dead longer than some of them have been alive.
They all watched Noonan's biopic -- it's called "The Walking Dead." Surprisingly popular, it was.
nice tune.
Great minds think differently, because Danny Kaye is what I think of:
https://youtu.be/uJ9bnC1v1xc
We grew up with his album Pure Delight, which included a version of that song slightly different from (and, IMHO, better than) the one in that clip. ("I'm Anatole of Paris/My small frou-frous/Make heavy news/ From Fifth Avenue casements/to Orbach's basements").
Just looked up Sylvia Fine -- what a treat!
Oh little bunny Jebus, have I been waiting for to return from your vacay (welcome back, btw!) -- it was the week that the US Zio's lost all credibility & Biden may have lost the fucking election by alienating every one of the 18–35 year-olds who vote Dem. It's tough to sell people on "We're Not the F-word" when you're enabling said Fascism twice as hard & twice as fast, with a much bigger budget.
I guess we still have enough primaries yet to come for voters to vote "uncommitted" or for whatever micro-Dem candidates are still on their state's ballots to let the DNC know they're headed for disaster if the course remains unchecked.
[Yes, you can all yell at me now. It is my & only my fault disaster is imminent...]
I thought maybe one throwaway line, like, "Look, I know it's hard seeing kids killed, and you want it to stop, but.." (don't ask me how to finish that sentence, please, genocide-justifying isn't in my skill set). But no, nothing. Not even the tiniest olive branch offered, which I understand is a metaphor that comes straight outta Palestine.
Meh, taking any position on the Israeli Intifada would lose the election. Attempting to mold the bowl of jellyfish that is the voters who see an election as a special episode of The Masked Singer into a "winning coalition" is a fool's errand. Rather than make demands that will be ignored and worry about "complicity" at this point in our history, Biden is trying to mitigate damage. Look, we all have to grapple with the chance that American democracy, like a turkey staring at the sky in the rain, may be too stupid to live.
It was just needlessly insulting. This shouldn't have been that hard to do. Acknowledge that we all feel horror at what we're seeing transpire in Gaza, acknowledge that among the protesters there are many who mean well, say you're working hard to bring about peace, sign the fuck off. There's probably a standard speech in the White House library, the patronizing one that elder politicians ALWAYS direct at young activists. Nobody's expecting him to sign on to "Divest Now!" but he also didn't need to ratify every lying Republican talking point, as if that ever does anything except help the Goddamn Republicans.
Also totally agree about "too stupid to live", should be printed on the fucking flag.
And the fact that it was so maladroit tells me this is Biden speaking from the heart, it's not the product of wordsmithing by the political consultants. He really does just hate student protesters, in fact that's what he said back when he was in college himself, he called them "assholes" then and it's clear he still believes this.
I have no Idea which maladroit statement Biden made, but what I scraped together shows no olive branches, just affirming a right to protest and condemning violence. The bare minimum. He will lose some votes over this, but he'd lose a lot more going into the weeds of who shoved who first. If you think he's still that asshole from Scranton he probably is, but he might be a bit more. There is no way to address the demonstrations that doesn't lose votes. He's likely making a cold calculation, along with how much shit from Israel he's willing to eat for a cease fire that may not come until Bibi is satisfied with the body count.