I would expect no better from Bethany Mandel, who I last recall ranting and raving about having to wear a mask at her kid’s pediatric appointment (the horror! But it’s always useful to be reminded that these people would dissolve into a blubbering heap if they ever faced a real hardship).
However, Chait has really been working overtime to carve a niche out for himself as “the reasonable liberal.” First he promoted that ridiculous alleged expose on trans kids. Now he suggests we’re supposed to argue “ideas” with conservatives who have no actual ideas beyond the fascistic goal they are striving toward but trying to disguise through murky semantic games.
"Reasonable liberal" my ass. More like well-paid and self-important useful idiot.
My favorite memory of BM, who should just be referred to by her initials forevermore given their appropriateness, is when she tried to pass off a mask that looked like a 5 pack a day smoker had been wearing it for a year as one her kid wore to school. Anybody who takes her remotely seriously needs to just be pointed and laughed at.
I'd forgotten about that fiasco and only remembered she had been a huge anti-masker during the height of Covid.
I remember back in his Village Voice days, Roy used to do an assessment of the stupid to evil ratio of conservatives. With Mandel, those two qualities are struggling in a relentless death match.
I didn't think it would be so easy, but I just typed "Bethany Mandel mask" and there was the whole story with pix. Imagine that being your claim to fame.
Yeah, but a bunch of the references -- especially the ones from non-political publications -- don't really question her claim. They just refer to it as a mother's concern. So many readers would come away thinking she had a legitimate beef instead of an obvious hoax.
Now that I've immersed myself in the glory that is Hillwood (one of Marjorie Merriweather Post's money-flaunting sites), I've adopted Russian iconography for every occasion. Thus, when anyone invokes 'mother' as a reason-trumping artifact, I default to my now all-purpose epithet "Three Handed Mother of God!"
Which is just such utter bollocks. Literally millions of us were wearing masks daily and could look down at the end of the day and see, nope, doesn't look like I cleaned a baby's bottom with this one. Just straight journalistic malpractice that makes me irrationally angry on the internet.
Well, a couple of hundred million of us got vaccinated and we can all look down at the end of the day and see we're not dead from vaccine poisoning. And yet that doesn't stop the lunatics from imagining we are.
Weird that "Not Dead Yet!" is enough of a cri de coeur to trigger whitey/righties. Almost as if the actual fact (& factual act) of other people living is just too much for them.
Proper prep for going on an interview to plug the book would include amongst the priorities having a definition of woke on hand. So you can add that failing along with that rightly viral clip.
BTW: Mandel, in her tweet, misused the word radical. Something's very, very wrong calling well-documented revisionist history as radical.
I should add that there's no real argument against "woke". That is, by definition it's involving factual truths. Which to say, as a generalization, there is no substantive arguments against it. As such, any argument against it is by definition bullshit.
I nearly spewed when she got to the "This is gonna go viral" bit. Opens a window into her mind, busy thinking about the intertubes rather than, you know, answering the GD question.
John McWhorter, I started reading him in an attempt to understand Black conservative thought and because I like learning about linguistics. It was like eating kale without the health benefits but with kale, I came to enjoy it but with McWhorter, well, he never had “comments” but he did have an email address to contact him. I used it several times to point out - politely, this is no Edroso we’re talking about - why it’s wrong to say a conservative policy can’t be racist if some Blacks, like John McWhorter, agree with it and similar intellectual rebuttals but he never responded. Am I taking more credit than I deserve when I note that email link is now gone? Maybe, but consider me in the “McWhorter is another conservative snowflake” camp.
re domenich, hell, re all right wing pundits: one pig in the slop grunts, and the others grunt approvingly. none of their supposed wisdom has to have meaning or in fact any connection to logic-based reality. all it has to do is trigger a vague feeling of resentment and bitterness toward---dare I say it---the actual woke community of human beings, a group they will never have membership in, so one they must denigrate.
Hey, it works just fine inside the bubble, you make your pig-grunt and all the other pigs nod like they understand exactly what you mean, and nobody asks you to define anything, just keep on gruntin' and pass the slop. Never venture outside the bubble, Bethany!
Terminal stage Leftism (and, yes, it's capitalized, you dolt). We're definitely in the absolute last stages of Leftism as it shrinks and becomes completely vestigial. All that's left of Leftism is its complete domination of arts and entertainment, science, academia, healthcare, sports, corporate culture, banking, Wall Street, government, and fashion. Other than those few well-ignored areas of life, Leftism has all but disappeared.
While we're on the topic of how conservatives torture the language, someone should also ask them what they mean by "decadent."
Like, is it reveling in the hedonistic fantasy that everyone is treated with dignity, has health insurance, a livable wage, bodily autonomy, is allowed access to the ballot box, and competes on a level playing field? Because if that's decadent, then Caligula's court has got nothing on me.
Say, this "definition" stuff is so useful. Here's one:
NatCon, a portmanteau of National Conservative, is a radical white supremacist belief system demanding that our institutions be dominated culturally, demographically, numerically, and politically by white males, basically holding the position that our country would be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites, with the exception of Jews who out-compete non-Jews for resources (i.e., precious bodily fluids). It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which this extreme white dominance is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.
Now we can call everything NatCon and fearlessly go on TV to define it without stammering.
Relax. We're only imprisoning you til you adopt the cute, deferential downcast-eyes look we require. Then, you can come out and live with us! Well, maybe not exactly WITH us – the sub-basement is well-apart from the living quarters, but 3 squares and a cot! Assuming you gumption-up and grow some vittles in between the proper-thought process training sessions.
Okay, I can get the tortured academospeak rhetoric ("Niemanian Leftism? All I can think of is Leroy Nieman) but WTF is up with "kale foam"? I consulted Google, and all I can figure is it's yet another vaguely trendy plant item (c.f. arugula) Jonah heard about somewhere, probably being served at an expensive Manhattan restaurant, and immediately became The End Of Manly Food wherein stormtroopers confiscate your steaks and sandwiches and we're all eating bugs and kale foam and our precious bodily essences are tainted. (And we all know how conservatives love their Big Sandwiches!)
But don't you know that we (and by "we" I mean "everyone to the left of Mussolini") are responsible for (and also enthusiastically supportive of) EVERY wacky idea that comes out of LA and New York City? Sorry, it's in your contract.
It's worth noting the lengths these people will go to in order to propagate "woke" as opprobrium, specifically by using variants such as "wokeism" and (my personal favorite) "wokester." Fuck them. I have no problem embracing "woke," having proudly been slurred as "progressive" and, before that, "liberal."
Seems like the hit job on "liberal" was most successful, probably because a lot of Democratic politicians who might have used the term to describe themselves went with "Who, me? Liberal? What do these words even mean? Please, enough with the labels!" when the attacks came.
They had a much harder road with "Progressive", because of people like Bernie and AOC responding with "Hell yeah, and proud of it!" and tens of millions of young folk saying "Yeah, so what?"
This isn't really that hard, I think. We don't need every elected Democrat to suddenly declare themselves Proudly Woke, just a few are enough for the general public to get a clue it's not the slur it's intended to be.
The fact that Ben Domenech is already thinking "Woke" as a slur isn't working and is auditioning replacements is such a perfect example of what happens when you just haul off and punch the bully in the mouth that is could be the subject of an after-school special.
"It's just a shame that my opponent has resorted to name-calling instead of working together blah blah across-the-aisle blah blah hard-working families blah blah kitchen table blah blah pocketbook."
Good piece. I gather that Woke as a phenomenon is a species of misinformation, much as with, to name a few, CRT, Hilary’s emails, hunter’s laptop, “politically correct” etc. I assume these don’t fall out of the sky and take time and money to create and launch. I thought that PC used derogatorily has been successful for decades in casting aspersions (I recall it in the 80’s) and rallying right wingers. But “woke” appears to have degraded in mere months, as shown by a recent poll that found it a basically positive term. More generally, perhaps the people who fund these efforts realize that the entire Frank Luntz w Fox News megaphone bullshit shop is in decline. What then?
Good point, I think Roy posted earlier about a poll that showed more than half think it's a good thing. Sounds like the ol' Message Machine is in need of a tune-up, or at least a lube job.
Where does the average American stand on “wanker” as a slur? Something like “Ron DeSantis? [jerk off motions with hand] [said with disgust:] What a fucking wanker!” I think it’s an epithet us woke folk can get behind…
"...that the entire Frank Luntz w Fox News megaphone bullshit shop is in decline."
I'm not sure that's really the case, though. It's evolving, certainly. For the worse, or for better, depends on your point of view. As they say: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...
I think Luntz reputation was really built on the Democrats ineptitude and their eagerness to run from a fight: "Sure, OK, you can have 'liberal', not like we were using it, or anything!"
Faced with even a handful of elected Democrats whose response to attacks isn't to imitate an armadillo, Luntz' tactics don't work so good. Also, for all of the evil it's caused, one effect of social media is that our own "messaging" is no longer limited to the handful of elected Dems who are allowed on Face the Nation.
Oh, well you can't possibly call your opponents out for their confusion between nouns and adjectives, that might get you labeled as an elitist, or even worse, "Grammar Nazi."
I assume that panel discussion would have been just as useful, just as enlightening, if the panel had been composed entirely of white people? Because making an organization (or a discussion) more diverse can't possible have any benefits, right? Like questions being asked that might not have been asked otherwise?
I *knew* that name was familiar! I remember your takedown in the Oughts, and her *writing* sounded like her *speech* even then
I would expect no better from Bethany Mandel, who I last recall ranting and raving about having to wear a mask at her kid’s pediatric appointment (the horror! But it’s always useful to be reminded that these people would dissolve into a blubbering heap if they ever faced a real hardship).
However, Chait has really been working overtime to carve a niche out for himself as “the reasonable liberal.” First he promoted that ridiculous alleged expose on trans kids. Now he suggests we’re supposed to argue “ideas” with conservatives who have no actual ideas beyond the fascistic goal they are striving toward but trying to disguise through murky semantic games.
"Reasonable liberal" my ass. More like well-paid and self-important useful idiot.
On my extremely short list of pundits with anything of value is *not* nor never was Chait's name.
My favorite memory of BM, who should just be referred to by her initials forevermore given their appropriateness, is when she tried to pass off a mask that looked like a 5 pack a day smoker had been wearing it for a year as one her kid wore to school. Anybody who takes her remotely seriously needs to just be pointed and laughed at.
So she’s pro-life, or at least freedom?
I'd forgotten about that fiasco and only remembered she had been a huge anti-masker during the height of Covid.
I remember back in his Village Voice days, Roy used to do an assessment of the stupid to evil ratio of conservatives. With Mandel, those two qualities are struggling in a relentless death match.
cue old Reese's ad: 'hey you got some stupid on my evil!' 'whut? no you got some evil on my stupid!' (Mandel). 'hey, it's pretty good!' and...exeunt.
Works for me, as long as, after they exeunt, we close, lock and bar the door behind them, Katie.
"Two Third Reichs that Third Reich together. . . ."
The mask actually looked like it had been used as a diaper - "It goes over the MOUTH,
Bethany, the MOUTH!"
I didn't think it would be so easy, but I just typed "Bethany Mandel mask" and there was the whole story with pix. Imagine that being your claim to fame.
Yeah, but a bunch of the references -- especially the ones from non-political publications -- don't really question her claim. They just refer to it as a mother's concern. So many readers would come away thinking she had a legitimate beef instead of an obvious hoax.
Now that I've immersed myself in the glory that is Hillwood (one of Marjorie Merriweather Post's money-flaunting sites), I've adopted Russian iconography for every occasion. Thus, when anyone invokes 'mother' as a reason-trumping artifact, I default to my now all-purpose epithet "Three Handed Mother of God!"
https://russianicons.wordpress.com/tag/three-handed-mother-of-god/
Say it with a slightly reverent-but-intense low voice, sorta like "Sonja Henie's TuTu!"
Which is just such utter bollocks. Literally millions of us were wearing masks daily and could look down at the end of the day and see, nope, doesn't look like I cleaned a baby's bottom with this one. Just straight journalistic malpractice that makes me irrationally angry on the internet.
Well, a couple of hundred million of us got vaccinated and we can all look down at the end of the day and see we're not dead from vaccine poisoning. And yet that doesn't stop the lunatics from imagining we are.
Weird that "Not Dead Yet!" is enough of a cri de coeur to trigger whitey/righties. Almost as if the actual fact (& factual act) of other people living is just too much for them.
Existence...how does that work?
Wasn't she the one protesting mask mandates that school boards were calling for...while homeschooling her kids?
Chait relishes his role as the new Alan Colmes
Alan lifts his head from his bowl of gruel, perks up his ears and asks, "Did someone, somewhere, mention my name?"
😂
Christ, what a bunch of assholes.
As for Chait's defense of Mandel:
She was talking for awhile before she froze; and
Proper prep for going on an interview to plug the book would include amongst the priorities having a definition of woke on hand. So you can add that failing along with that rightly viral clip.
BTW: Mandel, in her tweet, misused the word radical. Something's very, very wrong calling well-documented revisionist history as radical.
I should add that there's no real argument against "woke". That is, by definition it's involving factual truths. Which to say, as a generalization, there is no substantive arguments against it. As such, any argument against it is by definition bullshit.
Hearted for the truth, which come to think of it could use some more hearting.
Here are some hearts you can use:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
On behalf of truth, who was unable to be with us today to accept this award, I thank you.
I nearly spewed when she got to the "This is gonna go viral" bit. Opens a window into her mind, busy thinking about the intertubes rather than, you know, answering the GD question.
Shut the damn window!
John McWhorter, I started reading him in an attempt to understand Black conservative thought and because I like learning about linguistics. It was like eating kale without the health benefits but with kale, I came to enjoy it but with McWhorter, well, he never had “comments” but he did have an email address to contact him. I used it several times to point out - politely, this is no Edroso we’re talking about - why it’s wrong to say a conservative policy can’t be racist if some Blacks, like John McWhorter, agree with it and similar intellectual rebuttals but he never responded. Am I taking more credit than I deserve when I note that email link is now gone? Maybe, but consider me in the “McWhorter is another conservative snowflake” camp.
Thank you for your service.
Honestly, I'd rather listen to the rabid, screaming schoolboard Karen's than put up with that pissy sneer you get from
Old school conservative assholes like Jonah and Domenich.
re domenich, hell, re all right wing pundits: one pig in the slop grunts, and the others grunt approvingly. none of their supposed wisdom has to have meaning or in fact any connection to logic-based reality. all it has to do is trigger a vague feeling of resentment and bitterness toward---dare I say it---the actual woke community of human beings, a group they will never have membership in, so one they must denigrate.
denigrunt, no?
Take credit!
That's the third person plural present indicative form...
Grunt, Denny, GRUNT!
Hey, it works just fine inside the bubble, you make your pig-grunt and all the other pigs nod like they understand exactly what you mean, and nobody asks you to define anything, just keep on gruntin' and pass the slop. Never venture outside the bubble, Bethany!
Stage one: Corrupt the meaning of a virtue beyond comprehension. Stage two: turn it into a vice.
". . . the identitarian, decadent, terminal stage leftism . . . "
Terminal stage Leftism (and, yes, it's capitalized, you dolt). We're definitely in the absolute last stages of Leftism as it shrinks and becomes completely vestigial. All that's left of Leftism is its complete domination of arts and entertainment, science, academia, healthcare, sports, corporate culture, banking, Wall Street, government, and fashion. Other than those few well-ignored areas of life, Leftism has all but disappeared.
"My decadent, weak enemies are all-powerful!"
All-powerful just like God, but God loses if we don't kneel and pray before EVERY football game.
If gods are so powerful, how come the Saints don't win every game, huh?
"Our three main areas of domination are....." Wait, I'll come in again."
While we're on the topic of how conservatives torture the language, someone should also ask them what they mean by "decadent."
Like, is it reveling in the hedonistic fantasy that everyone is treated with dignity, has health insurance, a livable wage, bodily autonomy, is allowed access to the ballot box, and competes on a level playing field? Because if that's decadent, then Caligula's court has got nothing on me.
I'd be happy with a decadent Supreme Court if it meant we tossed each justice out after a decade.
"Liberal Terrorist plans to decimate Supreme Court."
OK, once we settle on the decimal system*, we should be able to reason our way outta this dilemma.
*We're not there yet, not til we all agree that the world's best trumpeter is Kilometers Davis.
I don't get how they settled on "Woke" .
Isn't "asleep" the opposite of "woke?"
Seems like the "Wake up Sheeple" crowd would be proud to be all "woke."
It's a term Black people use. 'nuff said.
Like Roy said, "woke" = "n****r-lover."
Say, this "definition" stuff is so useful. Here's one:
NatCon, a portmanteau of National Conservative, is a radical white supremacist belief system demanding that our institutions be dominated culturally, demographically, numerically, and politically by white males, basically holding the position that our country would be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites, with the exception of Jews who out-compete non-Jews for resources (i.e., precious bodily fluids). It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which this extreme white dominance is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.
Now we can call everything NatCon and fearlessly go on TV to define it without stammering.
I like this, and can supply pictures of the angry mob if necessary.
How about we shorten it to Nat C?
2 marks!
Damn!
I'mo retire from the field for the rest of the campaign. By sometime late tomorrow maybe I'll have a snappier comeback.
I did Not C that coming.
Dunno, Chait seems awfully proud of her definition, which reads as if generated by ChapGPT. "Equality of group result," you say?
"Where only the cutest & fuzziest puppies will be seized & placed in kennels, enforced by an angry mob."
Relax. We're only imprisoning you til you adopt the cute, deferential downcast-eyes look we require. Then, you can come out and live with us! Well, maybe not exactly WITH us – the sub-basement is well-apart from the living quarters, but 3 squares and a cot! Assuming you gumption-up and grow some vittles in between the proper-thought process training sessions.
I love vittles! Those grow on a vine, right?
Virtually.
Sorry.
Victually.
For me, this will always be pronounced "Wittles", as said by Abel Magwich to young Pip in that graveyard.
Okay, I can get the tortured academospeak rhetoric ("Niemanian Leftism? All I can think of is Leroy Nieman) but WTF is up with "kale foam"? I consulted Google, and all I can figure is it's yet another vaguely trendy plant item (c.f. arugula) Jonah heard about somewhere, probably being served at an expensive Manhattan restaurant, and immediately became The End Of Manly Food wherein stormtroopers confiscate your steaks and sandwiches and we're all eating bugs and kale foam and our precious bodily essences are tainted. (And we all know how conservatives love their Big Sandwiches!)
But don't you know that we (and by "we" I mean "everyone to the left of Mussolini") are responsible for (and also enthusiastically supportive of) EVERY wacky idea that comes out of LA and New York City? Sorry, it's in your contract.
Terrific as always, Roy. I quite enjoyed Amanda Marcotte's take as well: https://www.salon.com/2023/03/16/why-the-is-obsessed-with-woke--but-cant-define-it/
It's worth noting the lengths these people will go to in order to propagate "woke" as opprobrium, specifically by using variants such as "wokeism" and (my personal favorite) "wokester." Fuck them. I have no problem embracing "woke," having proudly been slurred as "progressive" and, before that, "liberal."
Seems like the hit job on "liberal" was most successful, probably because a lot of Democratic politicians who might have used the term to describe themselves went with "Who, me? Liberal? What do these words even mean? Please, enough with the labels!" when the attacks came.
They had a much harder road with "Progressive", because of people like Bernie and AOC responding with "Hell yeah, and proud of it!" and tens of millions of young folk saying "Yeah, so what?"
This isn't really that hard, I think. We don't need every elected Democrat to suddenly declare themselves Proudly Woke, just a few are enough for the general public to get a clue it's not the slur it's intended to be.
The fact that Ben Domenech is already thinking "Woke" as a slur isn't working and is auditioning replacements is such a perfect example of what happens when you just haul off and punch the bully in the mouth that is could be the subject of an after-school special.
I'm trying to envision the auditions...
"Next! Hello, c'mon in, take a chair..."
"Uhmm, hi...? Is this the test for the next wordle?"
"No, pal. We're looking for the next lib-owning epithet. But whaddya got?"
"Well, I've been experimenting with a few old standbys, only because I think some of our language is being eroded and degraded by modern culture..."
"OK, sure, sure. We're open-minded about all the discourse, unlike some other folk you've heard about."
"OK, so how about nigge-----"
"THANK YOU. NEXT."
These are my slurs, if you don't like them, I have others.
I've got slurs that jingle jangle jingle!
"I believe women should be paid and treated equally, given equal opportunities and so forth, but I'm not a feminist!"
"It's just a shame that my opponent has resorted to name-calling instead of working together blah blah across-the-aisle blah blah hard-working families blah blah kitchen table blah blah pocketbook."
Good piece. I gather that Woke as a phenomenon is a species of misinformation, much as with, to name a few, CRT, Hilary’s emails, hunter’s laptop, “politically correct” etc. I assume these don’t fall out of the sky and take time and money to create and launch. I thought that PC used derogatorily has been successful for decades in casting aspersions (I recall it in the 80’s) and rallying right wingers. But “woke” appears to have degraded in mere months, as shown by a recent poll that found it a basically positive term. More generally, perhaps the people who fund these efforts realize that the entire Frank Luntz w Fox News megaphone bullshit shop is in decline. What then?
Good point, I think Roy posted earlier about a poll that showed more than half think it's a good thing. Sounds like the ol' Message Machine is in need of a tune-up, or at least a lube job.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/08/gop-war-woke-most-americans-see-term-positive-ipsos-poll/11417394002/
Now THAT'S customer service!
Careful, er Roy's gonna be lingering around, expecting a tip...
Where does the average American stand on “wanker” as a slur? Something like “Ron DeSantis? [jerk off motions with hand] [said with disgust:] What a fucking wanker!” I think it’s an epithet us woke folk can get behind…
Lube Job? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DFnlkD-Dsw
"...that the entire Frank Luntz w Fox News megaphone bullshit shop is in decline."
I'm not sure that's really the case, though. It's evolving, certainly. For the worse, or for better, depends on your point of view. As they say: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail...
I think Luntz reputation was really built on the Democrats ineptitude and their eagerness to run from a fight: "Sure, OK, you can have 'liberal', not like we were using it, or anything!"
Faced with even a handful of elected Democrats whose response to attacks isn't to imitate an armadillo, Luntz' tactics don't work so good. Also, for all of the evil it's caused, one effect of social media is that our own "messaging" is no longer limited to the handful of elected Dems who are allowed on Face the Nation.
Oh? The bullshit purveyors are still using the term "Democrat Party"...
Oh, well you can't possibly call your opponents out for their confusion between nouns and adjectives, that might get you labeled as an elitist, or even worse, "Grammar Nazi."
I assume that panel discussion would have been just as useful, just as enlightening, if the panel had been composed entirely of white people? Because making an organization (or a discussion) more diverse can't possible have any benefits, right? Like questions being asked that might not have been asked otherwise?
What the...
Where you git them idears??!!
We got answers! Long's you ask the right questions!