White Like Me

sowell_poop
ABOVE: Tom Sowell. He even poops
like a white guy.

Shorter Thomas “Actually I’m Whiter Than Pat Boone” Sowell, Human Wingnuts Online
Race and Resentment

  • If liberals would just come out admit that black kids are stupid, rather than spouting all this claptrap about social inequities, then black kids would accept their rightful place at the bottom of the ladder and would stop beating up Asian Americans and other intellectual superiors.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™


 

Comments: 157

 
 
 

quite a way to start my day

 
 

Alternative shorter: Selection bias is step one for all my arguments.

Alternative alternative shorter: Haterz gonna hate.

 
 

I may be black (and therefore stupid), but I’m smart enough to stay right here in the boat.

 
 

The greatest falsehood of Sowell’s article isn’t a common reflection on harsh ethnic group reaction to another ethnic group perceived as going from less successful to more successful.

It’s the notion that somehow liberals are attempting to ‘rationalize’ or justify or excuse incidents and patterns of violence between, say, African Americans and Asian Americans.

They aren’t. They’re doing what they always do, taking the lead on helping set up the best ways they can think of to actually address such miserable conflicts in particular locations.

Where are the liberal people dismissing these incidents? Where are those liberals who not only mention realities such as ‘inequities’ or poverty but presume to stop there?

Conservatives, on the other hand, do what they always do: use such incidents as an opportunity to condemn those doing wrong without doing anything to fix the problem.

A bit of perspective, though. After a rally and public complaints by Asian American community leaders and members in San Francisco, the police cited also mention this:

Police say crime statistics do not show Asians suffer a disproportionate share of violence. But city officials say dozens of officers have been reassigned to areas with large black and Asian populations to dispel the fear.

In the recent incident where a 59 year old Chinese man was beaten to death by two African American youth, there’s this:

Both suspects have a criminal history of attacking people from other races as well, police said. One police investigator, who asked not to be identified, said police interviewed the suspects and both said they were “just looking for someone to assault, and race made no difference.”

The suspects have a history of attacking people dating back several years. Drummer has a conviction as a juvenile for assault on an African-American man in downtown Oakland. Both suspects were arrested in April 2007 on suspicion of attempting to rob a 31-year-old white man in Berkeley.

So, we have two young criminals who have repeatedly beaten people of a variety of races for robbery-related motivations, police captured and arrested them, and they’ve been charged, and people like Sowell use this as a reason to ponder why average African Americans are worse than other recent immigrants such as West Indians.

 
 

i dont know, i have to read this one, but it cant be any owrse that the ‘Waaaaa…… its not fair….’ coming from our very own UK Wingnut press…..

 
The Kenosha Kid
 

Alternative shorter: There is no crime that I can not figure out a way to blame on liberals.

 
 

No mangoes, only rotten jackfruit. He kicks off his bs with;

Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students beating up Asian American students.

Context, asshole…… i didn’t read much further…. however, as always, the Human Events commentators excelled….:

While I enjoy reading Human Events, it is Dr. Sowells articles which keep me consistently returning. I appreciate his application of logic to common arguments.

don’t you just lov ’em…..

 
 

I got out of the boat.

There were no mangoes, only excreted mango pits.

Shorter: Watch Tom Sowell use a couple of anecdotes to spout the same old right wing b.s.

I’m sure he’s happy his message is heard loud and clear by the commentariat:

I ve been attacked, shot at and guns pulled on me with death threats many times. I ve been attacked with a gun just for looking at a brown skin person. Black men only attack with guns or a group never one on one, they are hate filled cowards. The number of attacks and threats have been over 50 , my attacker was black every time. There will be no news story for me, there will be no hate crime against my black attackers. Many will even be happy at my troubles and call my attackers heroes. The world hates a strong Christian white man.
GOD’s love for me has overcome their hate.

Regards,
Donald Hostetler
~

 
 

“People who call differences “inequities” and achievements “privilege” leave social havoc in their wake, while feeling noble about siding with the less fortunate.”

Thomas Sowell needs to clean out his closet, because styles of clothes change after awhile and no one is running around wearing 19th century garb, except of course, people completely separated from the reality of what is happening.

I was a woman who had three children and left a man who wouldn’t support in probably one of the most contentious times when hate was stirred up against women with children who were getting assistance since Ronnie created his lobster-buying, fur-wearing black “welfare queen” myth in 1980.

I was regularly told that it was my fault that there exists no affordable childcare and no grants or scholarships or student loans in the world can make it possible to attend school to get training when you have three kids to raise alone.

But it was my fault of course, my ex got off the hook, the people who told me that good women stay with their husbands as long as possible got off the hook and these same people who believed in self reliance would wonder why my very well-off family wouldn’t help me. Well? What the hell, they were big believers in that self reliance those morons preached.

It was my fault I got what I deserved and should of just left my kids at home to fend for themselves, let the state take them away and if young and fit enough, maybe some nice upper middle white family could have them and raise them as their own.

And I could go off and accept my blame.

Of course I didn’t do that, I’ve been going against the grain so damn long that I have become highly suspicious when my actions gain approval of the wingnuttia (which ironically they have).

So, fuck you Sowell. You need to get rent a walk-up in Brooklyn, live there a year on $600.00 a month and then tell us how far you’ve climbed yourself out of the hole.

Idiot.

 
 

Oh and studies repeatedly show that among poor groups, crime is almost always perpetuated upon other members of their groups.

In other words, poor whites, poor black folks and poor latinos will more often get in domestic squabbles amongst each other which often lead to fatal ends, will steal from each other and betray and lie to each other.

Almost always the bottom cause of this behavior against their own interests is the lack of resources the need to gain the means to obtain those resources (money), the jealousy amongst each other about who and who isn’t deserving there of.

Of course, the rich man and the privileged sit on the sidelines, like happy spectators in a gladiator’s atrium, happy to encourage this behavior by starving them all, dangling rewards in front of one another and of course, feeding constant scripts that blame one over another for suffering that usually is the fault of none of them.

The latest of course has been the new (not so new now though) policy adopted in the 90’s by HUD to goad neighbors of public and section-8 housing assistance to report anyone they think is not complying with the rules (who gets more than you do in gubmint help).

So double fuck you Sowell you ignorant ass.

 
 

The world hates a strong Christian white man.

Much as I detest wingnuts, I truly do love their extraordinary ability to come up with strikingly ludicrous statements.

 
 

The world hates a strong Christian white man.

I don’t know, it kind of sounded like a repressed gay cry for help to me…

 
 

Based on the mangoes ya’ll have brought back to the boat, I propose an alternate shorter T. Bowell:

Bblack kids are so stupid they don’t realize only white people are allowed to beat up minorities.

How’d I do?

 
 

Aside from fucking up Black, that is.

FYWP.

 
 

Oh for heaven’s sake. Kids doing well in school have been beaten up by kids not doing well in school ever since there were schools. Given the thousands of schools in this country, there are bound to be a few incidents where the bullies are black and the bullied are asians. This requires a grand theory to explain?

 
 

Dr. Sowell has shown us that there is no context in which the privileged can ever be seen as being part of the problem. If the disenfranchised are beating up the newly-enfranchised, that exists outside of all history and society. Moreover, liberals, when pointing out the ethnicities of people in order to change the status quo, are playing the race card; conservatives, when playing up the ethnicities of perpetrators of muggings, are merely pointing out unpleasant truths that liberals cannot handle.

Can I get some wingnut welfare now?

 
 

I don’t know, it kind of sounded like a repressed gay cry for help to me…

If you were REALLY a Brit wouldn’t you spell it “gey?”

P.S. Alumium.

 
 

Can I get some wingnut welfare now?

I think you just earned a spot on FAUX and Fiends.
~

 
 

Where’s all this bullshit about “jealousy over ACHIEVEMENT” coming from, anyway? African-American sports and entertainment stars are celebrated in the community, not reviled. I haven’t noticed too many African Americans hating on the president, either, unlike the old fat white teabaggers.

While I know, first-hand, that among black youth there are those who consider academic achievement “acting white”, my guess is this attitude has faded somewhat if not almost entirely thanks to the election of Obama, who achieved his position through applying himself academically, thereby proving it can be done. But I have to say, putting myself in their shoes, that if my entire life experience of people who looked like me “making it” was of rappers and sports figures, if I had been to schools that were little more than bad jokes thanks to the white majority’s desire to make sure black kids didn’t get good educations, such a view would not be illogical, since it would perfectly match up with my own experience.

I get so sick of this bullshit. My state continued school segregation through a very transparent sleight-of-hand up until the last 5 years or so – and yet I’d hear from white people all the time about “why can’t THOSE PEOPLE get their act together?” In one memorable exchange, where I was doing a teacher training and explaining that the roots of poverty in the Delta region were easily traceable to plantation agriculture and the sharecropping system being replaced by mechanized farming, one of the white teachers asked, “why don’t THOSE PEOPLE just MOVE then?” My response was to circle the area on the map in the state where there is a large population of WHITE welfare recipients and ask, “why don’t THESE people move? There aren’t any jobs here, either. It’s because it’s easier to be poor in a familiar place, where you have family, friends, and acquaintances, and it’s not as if we have given THOSE PEOPLE the tools they would need in order to succeed somewhere else. Would you rather be poor and illiterate and surrounded by a social support system of friends and family, or poor and illiterate in a faraway city where you don’t know anyone?” Which pretty much ended that discussion.

It’s just disgusting. I live in a state where the white majority has, for the past 40 + years, been kicking the poor black people while they lay on the ground writhing in misery, and screaming while they kick “WHY DON’T YOU PULL YOURSELF UP?”

 
Donnie Hostetler
 

I’ve been attacked at least fifty times by african american men…lookout!….hah!…hah, hah!…hah! That was a close one. For those not watching me on webcam, I just defeated three african american men who assaulted me with shiriken, nunchakus, and a picost. What’s a picost, you ask? About $3.99 Even though there were three of them, it only counts as one attack. If I counted each individual as a separate attack, it would be…well, a lot. Did I ever tell you about the time I was drygulched by the Oakland Raiders?

 
 

Donnie Hostetler: White SHAFT

 
 

African-American sports and entertainment stars are celebrated in the community, not reviled.

In Indiana (at least the bits I’m familiar with and those are all very, very Caucasian) the schools and many parents place a huge value on athletic acheivement. Other things, not so much. But it comes down to the individual, no? I mean if I’d told the parents I wanted to be an athlete they would have laaaaughed ‘cos I’m a weedy little klutz. An entertainer? They would have killed me. There are still hard feelings because I didn’t go to med school.

While I know, first-hand, that among black youth there are those who consider academic achievement “acting white”

No worries. If you go into poorer areas where there are no non-Caucasians, academic acheivement is a sign of thinking you’re “too good” for your peers. In other words, ranting about the liberal academic elite begins in the home.

And yes, even in an area everyone is poor, they always find someone who is poor enough to be “those people” who need to “get their act together.”

Obviously I’m not saying this to defend the assholes you work with. I just think it’s interesting that when you get down to it, people have an overwhelming need to 1.)Find an “other” and 2) Be total dicks to them.

 
 

Alumium

Is this among the contested spellings? I thought it was aluminium vs aluminum.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

People who call differences “inequities” and achievements “privilege”…

I do not think those words mean what he thinks they mean…

 
Mr. Wonderful
 

Sowell is a stunningly bad writer (let alone “thinker”). Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Every sentence dutifully starts out, and then collapses in a heap out of intellectual exhaustion.

What you get is not so much an intelligent man writing badly as a mediocre mind writing at the peak of its powers.

And God forbid he should try to distinguish racial conflict from class conflict.

 
 

The Great Aluminum v. Aluminium War has a strange history. Here.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I mean, if he wants to call the fact that I happen to be a white chick born in a middle-class(ish) family to intelligent parents who had the time to read to me and feed me decent food, an “achievement,” then I’ll take credit for it. But I suppose I should hate myself for not achieving more with what I have, since I can’t use those pesky “differences” to justify my non-bootstrappiness.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And God forbid he should try to distinguish racial conflict from class conflict.

Well, you know, that would mean that he would have to acknowledge that life is more complicated than he’d like it to be…and that’s just a slippery slope to talking about the kyriarchy and intersecting oppressions and all that liberal intellectual hippie shit.

 
 

Arky – yes to everything you said EXCEPT, fortunately I don’t work with those assholes – at least not on a day-to-day basis. I figured out long ago that my only hope for survival was to limit my DAQ (daily asshole quotient), so while I do have to have some limited contact with assholes in business, I’m able to keep it down to a bare minimum. Necessary because I’m not the type to sit idly by while some moron spouts racist or other hateful bullshit; I’ll speak up and tell them they’re being offensive, which is not the best way to win new customers (or friends, though they aren’t the type I’d choose as friends anyway).

 
 

While I know, first-hand, that among black youth there are those who consider academic achievement “acting white”

I know first-hand, as a white person, that academic achievement is often considered “acting like a dude who doesn’t want to get laid”.

Black teenagers are the same as all other teenagers, in other words.

 
 

Jennifer
“Where’s all this bullshit about “jealousy over ACHIEVEMENT” coming from, anyway?”

Sowell is saying, without really saying it, that people who succeed in life are naturally superior to those who don’t and that all those commie liberals want to do is tear down their betters and make everyone losers like them.

He could probably make a more nuanced claim and say that a merit based society is better than one that is strictly egalitarian to a fault (where the successful are penalized) but then he wouldn’t be a conservative.

 
Martian Buddy
 

GOD’s love for me has overcome their hate.

Regards,
Donald Hostetler

Is it just me, or does this sound like another evangelical who has rentboys.com bookmarked?

 
 

See, this thread is why I stick to bad jokes. Arky, Kate, and DocAmazing have said everything serious I might have said, leaving me sitting here (metaphorically) in a big pile of POOP.

 
 

Is it just me, or does this sound like another evangelical who has rentboys.com bookmarked?

I know few people who aren’t obsessed with hot, sweaty godlove.

 
 

But it’s really good POOP.

 
 

But it’s really good POOP.

And I take great pride in its heaping and molding. (For the Brits: moulding.)

 
Martian Buddy
 

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers notes that babies already demonstrate signs of bigotry at three months. Probably not news to the developmental psych majors, but still depressing as hell.

 
 

I think the root of the article is a little different: Sowell as a rule hates welfare and welfare makes you lazy. The black kids, therefore, are not inherently stupid, but are made stupid by The System which lets them Live Like Kings without doing any work. “Achievement” is the key word in the piece that keeps him a step away from making the conclusion that the black kids are inherently stupid. They don’t need to achieve because welfare is SO GREAT, therefore the budding Sowells – ha ha! – do not achieve and go bananas when they see people really doing it.

 
 

Whoa … getting off the boat = stepping into a LOLWUT-tornado!

Many of our educators, our intelligentsia and our media — not to mention our politicians– promote an attitude that other people’s achievements are grievances, rather than examples.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: epic gap between rich & poor!

A wonderful example — for the disciples of Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Achievements are like a slap across the face to those who are not achieving, and many people react with the same kind of anger that such an insult would provoke.

This explains the National Guard units that must now guard the White House 24/7, lest the constantly-present angry black mobs outside the gates burn it to the ground to teach that uppity Uncle Tom inside a lesson in wrath.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: making me facepalm.

Behold!

Teh trolling finger POKES –

“There is no reasonable argument with your points Mr(Dr) Sowell only unreasonable ones.”

I beg to differ.

The germ of this post is black violence against Asians.

One might wonder if such violence is far more frequent than that against fellow blacks – or if not, how any of the subsequent bloviating about poor blacks’ resentment of achievement holds up.

It isn’t, & it doesn’t.

Barack Obama’s life is a textbook rags-to-riches story. Where is all the working-class black rage against him – or the liberals’ contempt? He’s only the most obvious example – one could easily provide a hundred others.

Many liberals are enraged at his willingness to adopt or uphold conservative policies, but I’ve yet to hear a single one excoriate his path to success.

The deeply-beloved narrative of liberals despising individual achievement – or even individuality itself per se – is both bizarre & semantically senile. Its placid coexistance with the myth of fanatical liberals who worship left-wing heros & construct “cults of personality” around them is a most mysterious paradox indeed.

jim,Canada

– & having poked, needs a good scrub-down.

 
 

“babies already demonstrate signs of bigotry at three months.”

I suppose, but I would think that the nurture part of the equation can do a lot to affect how that plays out. I was raised to believe that bigotry is just wrong and while I am far from perfect that has stuck with me very well.

 
 

At the risk of brandishing the Humo(u)ress Dildo, this bit from the NYRB is about the best thing I’ve read about the Teabaggers. Give it a look.

 
 

The hatred of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up has far exceeded any hostility toward those who were simply born into wealth. None of the sultans who inherited extraordinary fortunes in Malaysia has been hated like the Chinese, who arrived there destitute and rose by their own efforts.

Inheritors of the Rockefeller fortune have been elected as popular governors in three states, attracting nothing like the hostility toward the Jewish immigrants who rose from poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to prosperity in a variety of fields.

Others who started at the bottom and rose to prosperity– the Lebanese in West Africa, the Indians in Fiji, the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, for example– have likewise been hated for their achievements. Being born a sultan or a Rockefeller is not an achievement.

What about hatred for Muslim Americans, who immigrate here from halfway across the world, work their way up and generally do quite well in the States (small businessmen in the Great Lakes, oil people in Texas, etc)? Hell, Arab Americans worked their way up and did so well in America that prior to 9/11, there were quite a few elections where Republicans won their vote.

But today, they’re as despised and rejected by society as the Jews were a century ago – and this rejection comes not from jealous blacks or Mexican welfare bums, but the cream of well-thinking white, Christian, middle-class America. Oddly enough, in Sowell’s long litany of poor tragic successful minorities, I detect no outrage at all towards the stigmatization of the Muslim community post-9/11.

 
 

This attitude is not peculiar to some in the black community or to the United States. The same phenomenon is found among lower-class whites in Britain, where academically achieving white students have been beaten up badly enough by their white classmates to require hospital treatment.

Lower-class whites in Britain? LMAO, try middle-class whites in America, who have an entire political support network to tell them that everything that happens to them is the fault of academically achieving black/Hispanic students.

 
 

Norman Podhoretz kicked Sowell’s ass when he was a kid.

 
 

Oh, and from the comments section;

That’s one of the Ten Commandments, do not covet your neighbor’s things. If everyone followed the Ten Commandments, the world would be a better place.

I fucking hate the self-righteous shitbags who use this argument. Mainly because it’s almost always used in defense of dishonestly earned wealth (e.g. multinationals in the third world) against people who are sick and tired of breaking their backs doing honest labor and getting absolutely nothing to show for it.

 
 

If everyone followed the Ten Commandments, the world would be a better place.

You shall have no other gods before me

It’s true: the world would be a better place if we all remembered to make our sacrifices to Zeus after placating Yahweh’s inferiority complex.

 
 

And I take great pride in its heaping and molding. (For the Brits: moulding.)

For Smut Clyde and company: POOPE.
~

 
Martian Buddy
 

I suppose, but I would think that the nurture part of the equation can do a lot to affect how that plays out. I was raised to believe that bigotry is just wrong and while I am far from perfect that has stuck with me very well.

That seemed to be the point he was going for, too–that you need to be socialized in order to learn who “your” social group is and even poor socialization can be overcome. I was just shocked by how early the ingroup/outgroup crap turns up.

 
 

I was just shocked by how early the ingroup/outgroup crap turns up.

Seeing as how I’m working for the tenth consecutive day, I can’t be arsed to read PZ right now. Is this a carryover of the common mammalian competition-within-the-litter issue?

 
A concerned citizen
 

You shall have no other gods before me

It’s true: the world would be a better place if we all remembered to make our sacrifices to Zeus after placating Yahweh’s inferiority complex.

Jehovah, baby, you know you’re the only god for me. You’ll always be my saviordaddy.

 
Martian Buddy
 

Seeing as how I’m working for the tenth consecutive day, I can’t be arsed to read PZ right now. Is this a carryover of the common mammalian competition-within-the-litter issue?

It’s an analysis of a New York Times article on infant morality where the authors were discussing the roots of morality (and tearing apart Dinesh D’Souza in the process.)

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

At the risk of brandishing the Humo(u)ress Dildo, this bit from the NYRB is about the best thing I’ve read about the Teabaggers.

That was fucking excellent. Thank you!

 
 

the authors were discussing the roots of morality

I haven’t had a die job in a while, so my sadistic roots are showing.

 
nationalplumbingcode
 

One of Sowell’s readers does have a good idea:

“I would have thought a TV show for you would be a hit.”

I dunno if a Sowell show would be a hit in the civilian world or not but based on his bloggingheads work I’d say a Sowell show would definitely make the SadlyNo top ten list.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I was just shocked by how early the ingroup/outgroup crap turns up.

Well, I mean, there’s a certain advantage to it. It’s probably in a child’s advantage to figure out from an early age who is “strange” and who is not, and it doesn’t seem inconceivable that an infant brain would use skin color to differentiate that. Furthermore, constructing groups and hierarchies is a normal part of human cognition, and it seems natural to me that babies would construct a paradigm that included a more complex understanding of people who they spend more time around. (Does this make sense? I am drugged with allergy medicine and I’m too lazy to read the article).

 
 

babies already demonstrate signs of bigotry at three months

Uh, no, it doesn’t show that. What it shows is that babies demonstrate preferences at three months, and it’s hardly surprising that those preferences would be for faces that look most like the faces the baby has learned to associate with caregiving, whether those faces be white or black. If a white baby has been mostly cared for by a black caregiver, or vice versa, you’d find that that particular baby had a preference for others who look most similar to the caregiver, who looks less like the baby than those the baby prefers less.

People evolved in familial and tribal units, and so it would be surprising if we didn’t exhibit some atavistic preferences for those who look most like ourselves, since membership in a group improved our ancestors’ chances of survival. The most obvious group attachment to form would be to the group an individual was born into. Due to family and tribal kinship, that group would likely resemble the individual physically more than anyone from another tribe, and so physical characteristics became a crude marker for group identification – which of course became more ingrained when overlaid with culture, in which groups sought to further differentiate themselves from other groups.

It’s the culture where the bigotry comes in. Crude group ID based on physical markers alone is a survival tactic, while “Muslims are evil and must be destroyed” has less to do with how Muslims look than with an insistence on the part of another group, who just happen to look different physically, that Muslims are inferior and wrong because they believe different things. That’s bigotry, and it’s entirely born of culture.

 
nationalplumbingcode
 

Oh, wait, nevermind. Sowell’s never been on bloggingheads. In fact, AFAIK, he doesn’t do debates, on TV.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Jennifer said,
May 9, 2010 at 19:44

Jennifer said it much better.

And this is a dangerous topic for me to discuss, as I’ve had *horrible* baby fever lately.

 
 

In fact, AFAIK, he doesn’t do debates, on TV.

He used to do Buckley’s show.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

I’ve always thought that black kids accusing other black kids of “acting white” because they got good grades was functionally the same thing as white kids calling other white kids dorks, nerds, Four-Eyes, teacher’s pet and so on for getting good grades.

I’ve never thought this had anything to do with the ethnicities of the kids, except as a predictor of what insult they’ll use. The cultural meme of the smart kid being hung from a peg in a locker by the football team is not racial in nature, in my experience.

Nevertheless, the conservatives will trot it out at every opportunity rather than taking a real look at inequity and privilege.

 
 

WRT the whole “acting white” thing, yeah, it’s not uncommon for kids of any race to rag on the brainy nerds. My point was that it could also represent the experience of the kids – how many kids in poor neighborhoods and schools have experience with people like themselves who have “made it” through education? I don’t think it would be unlikely that some black kids view education as a way to get ahead as something that only works for whites, like most other things. In that last regard, they would have the kernel of the truth, since it’s been the white majority’s voting patterns that have ensured that so many black kids in this country go to shitty, underfunded schools. Unsurprising that some of them might recognize from the moment they walk through the doors of the school that education isn’t really something that the voting majority wants or encourages them to excel in.

 
 

Good godz, there’s no way I’m getting out of the boat for this. Fuck mangoes, I’m allergic to them anyway.

 
 

I know, first-hand, that among black youth there are those who consider academic achievement “acting white”

Yeah? Well I know, first-hand, that among old white people there are those who consider an academically accomplished black President to be an affront to all real muricans an who does he think he is with his fancy Harverd education aNd he probablee didn’t REALY deserve to be there dam affirmative action case like hes been HIS WHOLE LIFE!!!

How do ya like them mangoes?

 
 

How do ya like them mangoes?

Those mangoes suck.

 
 

kingubu said,

May 9, 2010 at 19:06

At the risk of brandishing the Humo(u)ress Dildo, this bit from the NYRB is about the best thing I’ve read about the Teabaggers. Give it a look.

I think Mark Lilla makes some good points, but I have huge problems with this article.

What’s more, it was a catastrophe whose causes no one yet fully understands, not even specialists who know exactly what derivatives, discount rates, and multiplier effects are.

I do know exactly what all those things are. My first (real) job out of collage was writing programs (on an Apple II!1!!) to value the embedded options in the bond future contract. I’ll explain to the crowd in terms even Mark Lilla can understand: the financial catastrophe was the result of unchecked corporate greed, deregulation, and Chicago School of Economics free market triumphalism. If by ‘libertarianism’ Mark meant these things, that would be fine, but this is clearly not the case.

The conservative media did not create the Tea Party movement and do not direct it; nobody does. Horse manure. I’ve not heard that the teabaggers are going to have an effect on any Democratic primaries, I wonder why that is?

The Reagan revolution was a success, in the sense that it shifted political attention in this country from social equality to economic growth. But like all revolutions that achieve their aims, it is now a spent force.7

The Reagan revolution was a success for the tycoon class. No one else has benefited. The Bush – Cheney regime was a spectacular, epic failure, and ought to have discredited not only its own participants, but also Arthur Laffer and the rest of the crowd.

Yet I hear them on my TV and see them in my “liberal” newspapers, as if nothing has happened?

Which brings us to Fox News.

The media counterestablishment of the right gives them that. It offers an ersatz system of direct representation in which an increasingly segmented audience absorbs what it wants from its trusted sources, embellishes it in their own voices on blogs and websites and chatrooms, then hears their views echoed back as “news.” While this system doesn’t threaten our system of representative democracy, it certainly makes it harder for it to function well and regain the public’s trust.

Hi Mark, remember when the NY Times and the Washington Post helped lie us into a war on Iraq? How about when they watched Bush and Cheney double the debt with tax cuts for rich people (people like Arthur Sulzberger Jr, and Donald Graham) and then concern-trolled the hell out of the deficit when the Democratic party tried to pick up the pieces?

Our alleged liberal media can’t get enough teabagger coverage. Here’s 500 baggers, well that’s fascinating! Those 10,000 people over there demonstrating for immigration reform? That’s not going to help corporate profits, so just ignore them. The same way the NYT and the WaPo ignored millions of people who protested the war on Iraq.

The teabaggers are just the Republican base, acting out. The real problem is this. And the NYT is part of the problem.
~

 
Martian Buddy
 

Uh, no, it doesn’t show that. What it shows is that babies demonstrate preferences at three months, and it’s hardly surprising that those preferences would be for faces that look most like the faces the baby has learned to associate with caregiving, whether those faces be white or black.

Yeah, “bigotry” was a really poor choice of words on my part. I mixed up the studies on babies that the article was discussing with separate studies on young children that they discussed in a later paragraph.

 
 

Staying on the motherfucking boat. Sorry. I’m listening to Snoop Dogg. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna wave my motherfucking hands in the motherfucking air.

 
 

I’m gonna wave my motherfucking hands in the motherfucking air.
What, like you just don’t care?

 
 

I ve been attacked, shot at and guns pulled on me with death threats many times. I ve been attacked with a gun just for looking at a brown skin person. Black men only attack with guns or a group never one on one, they are hate filled cowards. The number of attacks and threats have been over 50 , my attacker was black every time. There will be no news story for me, there will be no hate crime against my black attackers. Many will even be happy at my troubles and call my attackers heroes. The world hates a strong Christian white man.
GOD’s love for me has overcome their hate.

Regards,
Donald Hostetler

It’s gettin so a white brotha caint even walk down da street widout gettin jacked up by da man!

Seriously, you stupid cracker motherfucker. Christians aren’t supposed to lie, especially about being Christian. You sound like my whore ex-mother-in-law who tried to justify her cuntly racism with another fabricated (not even good) story about being gang raped by 6 (or 4, or 17, or was it 9?) darkies. If you’re going to make up stories, don’t.

 
 

Hi Mark, remember when the NY Times and the Washington Post helped lie us into a war on Iraq? How about when they watched Bush and Cheney double the debt with tax cuts for rich people (people like Arthur Sulzberger Jr, and Donald Graham) and then concern-trolled the hell out of the deficit when the Democratic party tried to pick up the pieces?

Your Kung-Fu is strong.

 
 

Our alleged liberal media can’t get enough teabagger coverage. Here’s 500 baggers, well that’s fascinating! Those 10,000 people over there demonstrating for immigration reform? That’s not going to help corporate profits, so just ignore them. The same way the NYT and the WaPo ignored millions of people who protested the war on Iraq.

Ya know, it occurs to me that this is something like an “all-in” bet for the corporate media. Teabaggers are a vicious, quick-moving, blind, deaf and dumb worm that will attack its closest target if it feels the need to demonize it. It’s very likely that they have created this Frankenstien monster that will eventually eat them. There must be some among them who know this. I guess this is more of the “get what you can while you can” mentality that brought us to this place.

 
 

Shorter Sowell: I’ll try and channel the Beck denigrating the phrase social justice as a convenient way to make my columns pay more. Liberals are the real racists. Also.

 
 

I guess this is more of the “get what you can while you can” mentality that brought us to this place.

Or, they’ve visited Rio, Sao Paolo, and Buenos Aires* and have come to the conclusion that as long as they have enough money they can buy their own safety so they don’t have to care how much things deteriorate around their enclaves.

*The people I met in those three cities were great, but the disconnect (in general) between the slums and the fortified upper-class neighborhoods has to be seen to be believed.

 
 

Or, they’ve visited Rio, Sao Paolo, and Buenos Aires* and have come to the conclusion that as long as they have enough money they can buy their own safety so they don’t have to care how much things deteriorate around their enclaves.

*The people I met in those three cities were great, but the disconnect (in general) between the slums and the fortified upper-class neighborhoods has to be seen to be believed.

I’m no historian, and certainly have no authority to speak about South American countries, but I agree completely with what you are saying with one humbly offered thought: It seems these societies have always been that way, since the time of the conquistadors. I think that might provide a cultural acceptance of those things. Here, we don’t exactly get away with fencing off the “other side of the tracks” despite the best efforts of the priveliged whites. At some point I think that people will get past all this “OMFG the defsit is scareez!” horseshit and realize that they’re being robbed by the upper class. That could make the late 60’s look like a party that got too loud. I’m no fan of violence, but it almost seems as though every other avenue has been blocked over the last 30 years. The Obama administration, for me, represents my fear that the system cannot be changed from within.

 
 

At some point I think that people will get past all this “OMFG the defsit is scareez!” horseshit and realize that they’re being robbed by the upper class.

You’re more of an optimist than me.

Anyway, I’m no expert on South America, just reporting what I saw.

 
 

You’re more of an optimist than me.

Well, one can dream

 
 

Inheritors of the Rockefeller fortune have been elected as popular governors in three states, attracting nothing like the hostility toward the Jewish immigrants who rose from poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to prosperity in a variety of fields.

Behold the conservative mentality! Our work here is done!

 
 

Our work here is done!

So’s mine, sort of. I’m going home.

 
 

I have a question re. this bit of Sowell’s post:

Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students beating up Asian American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America.

My question is this; who exactly were these people Sowell alludes to who expected racism to magically disappear after Obama’s election? The answer is obviously meant to be “smelly hippy reverse-racists,” but I only remember seeing this claim in two places:

A) Conservative blogs and letters to the editor, where they claimed that Obama’s electoral win proved that racism no longer exists and we should all stop talking about white privilege now, and

B) Endless discussions wanking sessions on the political talk show circuit, where conservatives attempted to mainstream A above.

 
 

Nom de Plume,

I know first-hand, as a white person, that academic achievement is often considered “acting like a dude who doesn’t want to get laid”.
This.
Plus, I don’t want to diss you good people of the US and – Pullum forbid – perpetrate any variations of the “no word for X” meme, but it strikes me as somewhat significant that until I learned English and familiarized myself with US popular culture, I was not familiar with the concept of “geek” or “nerd”.

 
 

I like to call TS’s column “Thomas Sowell’s Missives From La-La Land”. Since nothing he writes bears any relationship to any world in which I have ever experienced, I have come to the conclusion that they are an account of a Gulliver’s Travels type anthropological survey in an alien dimension.

 
 

er, should have re-read that before posting, I guess I was hung up between saying “world I’ve lived in” or “experience” and split the difference…

though that’s not as hilarious as the time my German friend Birgit split the difference between American and British slang for money and asked me for some squids

 
 

Shorter Sowell‘s entire oeuvre: I’ll try and channel the Beck denigrating the phrase social justice as a convenient way to make my columns pay more. Liberals are the real racists. Also.

Fiquxt [f.g.j.].

 
 

Yeah? Well I know, first-hand, that among old white people there are those who consider an academically accomplished black President to be an affront to all real muricans an who does he think he is with his fancy Harverd education aNd he probablee didn’t REALY deserve to be there dam affirmative action case like hes been HIS WHOLE LIFE!!!

You know my grandma?

 
 

Alright, actually I am kidding–my late grandmother was a snob. She used to make a firm point of the fact that she was NOT from the Ozarks.

 
 

Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students beating up Asian American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America.

I love how shitty Sowell is as a writer.

 
 

My question is this; who exactly were these people Sowell alludes to who expected racism to magically disappear after Obama’s election?

Yes. Obama’s election did not represent the end of racism. It represented a sea-change concerning race in politics and public discourse, by showing that it is now possible for a non-white — an African-American, no less — to be elected to the highest office in the land. But we will not be able to come close to saying racism is over until a non-white is elected President and nobody remarks or notices that he’s not white.

 
 

not a gator: “…asked me for some squids.”

Hee. That reminds me of a friend of mine who, years ago, was dating a Vietnamese immigrant. She had a big fight with him one time because when he was trying to described how different San Francisco was from his home village, he said that “America was lousy”. My friend thought that was very rude, despite that nasty war. Her boyfriend was bewildered by her anger. Then they figured out he had smooshed the words “loud” and “noisy” together, resulting in “lousy”. In truth, his village had been way less lousy. (You know, when no land mines were being accidentally detonated. Those are really lousy.)

 
 

Btw all this liber-tea-bag-anarianism? It isn’t the rest of the world. It’s residents of the richest country in the world failing to understand that with 6 billion people on a small planet, you can’t just do whatever you want anymore. They need to grow up and pull dtheir collective hand out of their collective pants.

 
 

And yes, I am an angry, angry hippo.

 
 

How does a person get attacked 50 times? I’ve walked alone all over this country—including wards in Houston—and in Northern Europe, all hours of day and night for thirty years, and I have never been attacked. I’m a small woman. I walk like I carry a loaded gun, but in fact, have never carried a weapon whilst in civilian garb. Me thinks he either lies or starts fights.

 
 

How does a person get attacked 50 times?

Pheromones. He reminds people subconsciously of a steak dinner.

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

What I find amusing about the whole aluminum/aluminium c’nTROvuh’sy is not that the British pronounce it that way, but that it violates the rules of their dialect, and not ours.

Received Pronunciation is only supposed to allow two levels of stress: stressed and unstressed. That’s why the British are forced to pronounce “secretary” “SEC-ru-try.” Most American dialects allow three stress levels—some say four, counting “reduced” like the second syllable in “button.”

Unstressed syllables in English have a drastically reduced possible vowel complement—essentially only schwa and the short “i” sound. AL-YOU-MIN-i-um violates that rule. You can often hear a short pause, like most people use in preparing to pronounce a foreign word, before Britishers utter such words as AL-YOU-MIN-i-um or OH-REE-GAH-no or JAG-YOU-AR. Obviously these pronunciations have been invented solely to be different from the American ones, and it requires a shift of mental gears to utter them.

I picked those three examples because they actually violate the rules of every English dialect in that they have two syllables with secondary stress in the same word! There is no way such pronunciations could arise naturally, thus demonstrating my theory that they were invented as shibboleths to create a distinctively “British” identity.

 
 

Let me say this for our friends the Brits: at least they haven’t made a muck of spelling, the way we did when we tried to “simplify” and “Americanize” the spellings of certain words about a century ago. From whence we get “judgment”, which according to the rules of English pronunciation could only be pronounced as JUD-GUH-ment and which of course makes no damn sense whatsoever, as it utterly corrupts the root word’s spelling. And, also, makes those of us who recognize its absurdity and subsequent refusal to adopt subject to constant “corrections” by those who do NOT recognize that it’s a stupid and incorrect way to spell “judgement”.

That “e” is there for a reason, motherfuckers.

This of course does not let them off the hook for “Worcestershire” and any other number of pronunciation anomalies.

 
No-Visible-Means
 

#

N__B said,

May 10, 2010 at 0:48 (kill)

How does a person get attacked 50 times?

Pheromones. He reminds people subconsciously of a steak dinner.

I suspect roids and an underlying seething hatred to begin with.
Attacked 50 times??! This “christian” is looking for a fight. And when he inadvertently picks a battle with someone who can actually kick his ass, God will save the life of a wayward puppy.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

Rev, are you arguing for the Intelligent Design of British English? Why won’t the public schools Teach The c’nTROvuh’sy?

 
Smiling Mortician
 

It’s residents of the richest country in the world failing to understand that with 6 billion people on a small planet, you can’t just do whatever you want anymore.

I’m not sure most teabaggers have enough focus to fail to understand something that specific. They’re just really fucking stupid and have been seduced into the Angry Party because — hey! other people to share my crazy with! It’s a lovely combination. I just spent the afternoon critiquing draft essays from my freshman-comp students, a couple of whom are flat-out bugfuck teabaggariffic. One of them wrote about how he’ll have to keep his kids at home instead of sending them to school because class sizes are too big because OMG Obamacare! And this is from a guy who doesn’t have any kids because he’s . . . y’know . . . a kid.

Fucking teabaggers. Will no one think of the teachers?

 
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
 

Lurking Canadian said,
May 10, 2010 at 1:16

Rev, are you arguing for the Intelligent Design of British English? Why won’t the public schools Teach The c’nTROvuh’sy?

Ha! I guess I am. Though come to think of it, most prestige dialects like that are “Intelligently Designed”.

I should put in the disclaimer that I’m a staunch Anglophile, but I just find little linguistic glitches like this fascinating.

 
 

Off-topic, but Roger Ebert’s Cinco de Mayo donnybrook has me mesmerized.

The short version: Five kids wear American flag T-shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo. They get sent home, because the school thinks they’re trying to start something. Ebert tweets that it’s no different than if you wore a T-shirt with a hammer & sickle on July 4, and the teabaggers go apeshit.

Here’s a blogger and BigButtAndWood displaying his righteous outrage; apparently NASCAR fans are the best people in teh wurld.

And here’s a tale of a charming fellow over at RedState who displays the sort of rage we’re more used to seeing from the Tea Party.

 
 

per larkspur’s link,

Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812.

My sincere apologies.

 
 

Aluminu-, alumini-. How am I going to take my girl recycling if I can’t pronounce its name.

 
 

If you were REALLY a Brit wouldn’t you spell it “gey?”

P.S. Alumium.

married to a Canuck, so I do slip now and again, but you can stuck your Aluminum, Humor, nehborhood and red sox up your arse

 
 

oh, and another thing, the bottom floor of a building is the GROUND floor, not the 1st floor……..

 
 

How does a person get attacked 50 times?

The white sheets and the hood probably have something to do with it. And the burning crosses? Well, they just attract people, now don’t they?

 
 

oh, and another thing, the bottom floor of a building is the GROUND floor, not the 1st floor……..

In most buildings, the bottom, street-level floor is the LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL floor. At least according to the elevator buttons.

 
 

Which reminds me, the trolls have been very quiet lately. Have they been playing with the knives again?

 
 

Have they been playing with the knives again?

Socialized medication. It’s working!

 
 

So’s my ability to kill a thread, apparently.

I didn’t mean to!

 
 

I didn’t mean to!

It’s all fun and games until someone’s thread gets killed.

 
 

It’s all fun and games until someone’s thread gets killed.

Or it gets attacked fifty times, un-huh.

 
 

I picked those three examples because they actually violate the rules of every English dialect in that they have two syllables with secondary stress in the same word! There is no way such pronunciations could arise naturally, thus demonstrating my theory that they were invented as shibboleths to create a distinctively “British” identity.

Rules, we laugh in the face of rules when it comes to English, which is why its so ironic that it has become the lingua franca of the world (well, until the Brazilians or Chinese assimilate us all). Although there are some pedants among us (Guardian or Daily Telegraph letter pages, notably), the rules aint followed anymore. Personally, the language went to shit when we started to spell jail, ‘jail’, for gods sake.

My point, i think i forgot it…

 
 

J, your picking a fight, remember, we’re the fuckers that invented hooligans….

 
 

remember, we’re the fuckers that invented hooligans….

And Spotted Dick, too, as well.

 
 

Sowell stubs his toe on a nugget of truth:

While Obama’s winning the majority of the votes in overwhelmingly white states suggests that many Americans are ready to move beyond race, it is painfully clear that others are not.

Part of what makes this statement interesting is how carefully it was weasel-worded. What counts as “overwhelmingly” white, for example, and how many of those “overwhelmingly white” states did Obama win? Sowell doesn’t say, but a quick trip to the Census Bureau site reveals that there are 12 states where whites constitute 88.8% or more of the population. Of those, Obama won 4: Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine (plus 1 delegate from Nebraska.)

Link — http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ThematicMapFramesetServlet?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-tm_name=ACS_2008_3YR_G00_M00627&-ds_name=ACS_2008_3YR_G00_&-_MapEvent=displayBy&-_dBy=040

But what’s really interesting about this claim is the picture that emerges when you look at the percentage of white voters who voted for Obama. This actually yields more states with white majorities for Obama: 15 as opposed to 4. Unfortunately for Sowell, it also reveals the sheet-draped elephant in the room down there at the bottom of the graph. It is indeed painfully clear that some people can’t get past the color of a person’s skin.

 
 

How does a person get attacked 50 times?

You must remember that in the fReichtards’ thesaurus “Attacked” = “Looked at me in a way that pulled the hair trigger on at least two of my sphincters” or “Didn’t treat me with the respect and deference he owed me due to the natural superiority of my paler skin.” I’m sure that if the topic were illegal immigrants he’d have many tales about his near-death experiences at the hands of Latinos.

I’m also willing to bet this jackass is almost raped by big scary kw33rs at least three times a week, is frequently ripped off by greedy Joos, is nearly castrated by angry feminazis on a regular basis and those door dings he picks up in the parking lot are the work of enviro-terrorists.

 
 

“How does a person get attacked 50 times?”

I dunno…it’s pretty clear to me he has it coming. Also he’s a huge self-aggrandizing delusional dumb as a box of rocks ska-douche.

 
 

“I’m also willing to bet this jackass is almost raped by big scary kw33rs at least three times a week, is frequently ripped off by greedy Joos, is nearly castrated by angry feminazis on a regular basis and those door dings he picks up in the parking lot are the work of enviro-terrorists.”

and don’t get him started on all the cats who look at him with disdain and try to suck his breath. Don’t they know they’re inferior to him? For crying out loud, look at how poorly the furry little mongrels spell.

 
 

I have grown to despise people like Sow hell who have the gall to opine on situations that they know nothing about, to wit:

The hatred of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up has far exceeded any hostility toward those who were simply born into wealth. None of the sultans who inherited extraordinary fortunes in Malaysia has been hated like the Chinese, who arrived there destitute and rose by their own efforts.

What bullshit! He knows nothing at all of the history and politics of Malaya, now Malaysia. If he did, he would know that he’s talking out his arse.

 
 

You can often hear a short pause, like most people use in preparing to pronounce a foreign word, before Britishers utter such words as AL-YOU-MIN-i-um or OH-REE-GAH-no or JAG-YOU-AR. Obviously these pronunciations have been invented solely to be different from the American ones

Oh don’t be such a tosser, can’t speak to the 5-syllables of idiocy but oregano and jaguar ARE foreign words and Americans simply acquired them separately and applied a different stress to them.

 
Spengler Dampniche
 

Wow. I toddled on over there, and the shorter isn’t just correct in the usual “that’s the gist of it” way — it is precisely, exactly correct. That’s what he said.

 
 

oh, and another thing, the bottom floor of a building is the GROUND floor, not the 1st floor……..

Only in buildings with underground parking garages (they’re not “car parks”–sounds like something Sarah Palin would come up with) that have a ground floor lobby and hence no offices until you go up a flight anyway. While we’re on this, there’s no “e” in “story”. Also, cookie (singular) is spelled wrong. We don’t care. None of the rest of you can bake one worth a darn anyway, German-speaking world excepted (but even then, watch out for anything in the “spekulatius/pfeffernuss” family of confections unless you enjoy your tongue burning, and not in an orgasmic capsaiciny kind of way).

 
 

In most buildings, the bottom, street-level floor is the LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL floor.

Oops, Jennifer beat me too it. What she said.

 
 

Unstressed syllables in English have a drastically reduced possible vowel complement—essentially only schwa and the short “i” sound. AL-YOU-MIN-i-um violates that rule. You can often hear a short pause, like most people use in preparing to pronounce a foreign word, before Britishers utter such words as AL-YOU-MIN-i-um or OH-REE-GAH-no or JAG-YOU-AR. Obviously these pronunciations have been invented solely to be different from the American ones, and it requires a shift of mental gears to utter them.

Well, I say al-uh-MIN-yum. But then I’m just another dumb Yankee – what do I know about RP?

 
 

I agree with Jennifer above, re: the “bigoted babies”

There is a perfect advantage in having babies (or children) self identify, and prefer the company of groups of people that resemble them more than that of strangers. It means that relatives (or tribe members) will more like have your back than some group of strangers. They will more likely feed and shelter you, promoting your survival to adulthood, and procreation. Thus completing the “circle of life”. However, stating that the preferences that babies have for some people over others is equivalent to “bigotry” is merely a simple case of the researchers imposing their own beliefs on a research model. Not the first time, and definitely NOT the last time.

The best scientific experiments are ones where the researchers actively work to disprove their hypothesis, or to eliminate all possible sources of bias in their experiments, as the best way of preventing the unconscious selection of data that supports your hypothesis. Good scientists realize that it is far too easy to fool yourself, under the flag of “objective scientific inquiry”.

conservative & libertarian shitbag “think tanks” are packed to the rafters with “intellectuals” who have demonstrated an uncanny ability to twist any situation, fact, or anecdote into support for their closely held, preconceived, “conclusions”.

 
 

It’s spelled aluminum, but it’s pronounced “shar-day.”

 
 

Goddamnit Thomas Sowell is an Uncle Tom!

 
 

The number of attacks and threats have been over 50 , my attacker was black every time.

I live in New Orleans, and I’ve wandered through some fairly rough neighborhoods in Treme and the Ninth Ward. The only time I’ve been attacked was outside my apartment in the French Quarter by friggin’ white boys in a Nissan Titan pick-up truck, and that was a suckerpunch-and-run type of deal. Maybe it’s just you, asshole.

 
 

“R-U-M-P-O-L-E, pronounced ‘Marjoriebanks.'”

 
 

oh, and another thing, the bottom floor of a building is the GROUND floor, not the 1st floor……..

Only in buildings with underground parking garages (they’re not “car parks”–sounds like something Sarah Palin would come up with) that have a ground floor lobby and hence no offices until you go up a flight anyway.

Not to be persnickety (I love that word), but having underground parking or a basement makes no difference. Ground floor is 0, walking up the stairs gets you to the 1st floor, walking up gets you to the 2nd, etc, etc. The level at street level is not 1. Its like starting a (real) football game 1-1, or you being 1 on the day you are born, rather than 0. It makes no sense.

 
 

How does a person get attacked 50 times?

1) “What the FUCK are you looking at?”
2) Gold. Lots of gold.
3) Swastika tattoos

I’m sure there are 47 others, but I’m tired and late for a fight with a NIG black.

 
 

And the good ol US of Muthafuckin A gets to claim nukular. So SUCK IT UK! woohoo! Wolverines! USA! USA! UAS shit USA!

We also get to claim American exceptionalism, which I find to be awesome, in an OMFG are we that fucking stuck up? way.

 
 

There is no way I’m going to step out of the boat on this one. I think actor212 labeled it best, as Stockhomes syndrome.

 
 

It’s spelled aluminum, but it’s pronounced “shar-day.”

“R-U-M-P-O-L-E, pronounced ‘Marjoriebanks.’”

That’s like “Bob, pronounced Mangrove Throatwarbler.” Or whatever it was that was pronounced Mangrove Throatwarbler.

I see that no one rose to the defense of the indefensible “judgment” which means our children is learning.

 
 

We also get to claim American exceptionalism, which I find to be awesome, in an OMFG are we that fucking stuck up? way.

I suspect every nation has some flavor of exceptionalism– I’m not even sure if ours is the most outstanding example (Japan has its moments).

 
Col. Richard Hindrance (Mrs)
 

We Brits used to do exceptionalism, and do it very well, until we suffered our final reverses East of Suez.

The great raconteur and wit Peter Ustinov recalled once that his posh and venerable school in Westminster had an enormous mural in the main hall, which featured “Jesus pointing out to a Boy Scout the extent of the British Empire.”

Kind of summed up the ‘tude, really.

Of course, even today, the UK has a sizeable amount of people who think this still pertains. But they mainly confine themselves to writing furious letters to the Daily Mail and getting angry when on holiday in Continental Europe when Italians speak only Italian.

And yes, it is GROUND floor. Also.

 
 

Not following that link. Ain’t enough money or morbid curiosity in the world.

 
Sir Humphrey Appleby, KBE
 

Of course, even today, the UK has a sizeable amount of people who think this still pertains. But they mainly confine themselves to writing furious letters to the Daily Mail and getting angry when on holiday in Continental Europe when Italians speak only Italian.

Ahh yes. The newspaper read by the wives of the men who run the country. Har har.

 
 

It’s only the “ground floor” in mincing recipes. In Jamaica it’s the “jerk floor,” for example.

 
 

Actually, the French have a better argument for starting at zero – their use of “etage” for floor. A “floor” can be at any elevation, including below ground. A “stage” implies elevation, so the first stage should be above ground.

Steel shop drawings (the drawings prepared by the fabricator fr review by the engineering designer) usually ignore official floor numbers because there are often irregularities (mezzanine levels, for example) and refer to each level of floor beams as a “tier,” starting at the foundation. So if you have a building with three cellars, the ground floor is the third tier.

 
 

I used to drive a Jag-you-ar.

Couldn’t walk into the dealer without writing a check for $500. I think I put the service manager’s kid through college with that car.

They use to say you had to own 3 of them. One to be in the shop, one to drive and one for your wife to pick you up in when that one broke.

 
 

Actually, the French have a better argument for starting at zero – their use of “etage” for floor.

You elitist cheeseeating surrender monkey.

 
 

I used to drive a Jag-you-ar.

The best line I’ve heard about Jaguar is “The Best of British Engineering, All Over The Highway”

 
 

That’s like “Bob, pronounced Mangrove Throatwarbler.” Or whatever it was that was pronounced Mangrove Throatwarbler.

At the risk of being Pythonic

*A-hem*

It was spelled “Raymond Luxury Yacht” but pronounced “ThroatWOBBLER Mangrove”.

 
 

What’s a picost, you ask? About $3.99

That cracked me up (I’m late to teh party, I know). But I thought they were $3.14 each.

 
 

Thunder,

Agree with many of your points about that NYRB piece, especially about the Baggers “not being a media creation.” I do think Milla is right in the sense that FOX etc. didn’t create them– they’d still be out there– they’d just be bitching to one another instead of having a national “news” channel organizing their meetups and lending them the veneer of credibility.

Also, too, (and such as) I don’t think he meant “the Regan revolution succeeded” in the sense that success means “made everyone’s lives better”, only that it was effective in making people think about policy in terms of how it affects them personally, instead of in the context of the common good.

I do think, though, that his broader ideas about hyper-individuality, and how that overlaps with both 60s counterculture and the ‘Baggers of today are food for thought.

 
 

I live in New Orleans, and I’ve wandered through some fairly rough neighborhoods in Treme and the Ninth Ward. The only time I’ve been attacked was outside my apartment in the French Quarter by friggin’ white boys in a Nissan Titan pick-up truck, and that was a suckerpunch-and-run type of deal. Maybe it’s just you, asshole.

For all the USA is a dangerous, war-torn country it is possible to go to even shooty stabby places if you show a little common sense. I feel bad for children who can’t choose not to live in a house where some enemy of your parental unit is blindly shooting bullets through the windows.

As an urban bus driver in majority Black neighborhoods over a period of four years, I ran into some passengers who were looking to pick a fight and I did get called a cracker on a handful of occasions (such as the time I told a crazy drunk guy to either stop hitting on an 82 yo grandmother who rode my bus regularly, or get off the bus–and after he got done calling me a cracker-ass cracker, which I had to stifle my laughter over, some of the other passengers actually came up and apologized on his behalf) and a racist (like the time I passed up some kids who weren’t at the bus stop when the bus was late … oops, so sorry you missed the bus, boo hoo hoo–of course when the supervisor showed up to take Malcolm X Jr’s complaint, Mr. Agent-Provocateur boogied off the back door and disappeared like David Copperfield. He was trying to get an entire bus load of angry, tired, sweaty people to attack me, but it didn’t work because they all needed to make that connection downtown too.). But I never had a passenger jump up and beat my ass, no matter how cold I was at the farebox. The most physically threatened I ever felt driving was the time some drunk-ass obnoxious asshole fratboys (with “please sucker punch me” faces) got in my personal space in the driver’s seat.

That includes the time I (foolishly) had a standoff with some nasty, youthful pot dealers who thought they were shit. (I disagreed.) Apparently they had a reputation because the entire bus started laughing in relief when they got off the bus. And I just thought they were punks. Huh.

And you want to know why? It’s about social status. Asshole fratboys are assholes because they’ve never been told “no” their entire lives. (Whereas African-American children are quite likely to get whupped by their mamas for doing the slightest thing wrong. But even if they didn’t, there’s “school” to set them straight about their station in life.) Even white women, unless they are batshit crazy (you know, brain damage) do not swing around the sense of entitlement of young frat boys. I shouldn’t pick on youth because there are old white men who are just as entitled, if not more, but I only had to deal with them on football games. Come to think of it, in a nice parallel to the “cracker” incident, I had some Gator alumni cuss me the FUCK out for stopping to drop off some disabled fans and their families at the parking garage before taking them to their RV’s. Their wives then came up and apologized. Too late. Damn those pigfuckers to hell. Crap, I don’t believe in hell. Well, I hope they all die in really comical ways.

Another irony? I was warned about Miami fans. Fuckin’ warned they were scary urban bruisers who could stone cut you without thinking twice. And yes, I saw a few yobs. Well, Miami lost and I picked up, literally (I counted) 100 adults in orange and green on a 43-seat bus. For comparison, I can’t even fit 90 frat boys on the same size bus because they start whining and complaining about being packed in. I never had a football game bus so quiet and respectful. They were intelligently discussing what went wrong during the game and evaluating their team’s strengths and weaknesses. I had a bunch of Hispanic guys standing up front and they were nicer to me than any middle-aged white Southern fan from any college had ever been on the football bus. Scout’s honor. I wanted to take them home with me. Gator fans come in two flavors: shouty drunk (we won), and sour, belligerent drunk (we lost). Fuck them. Fuck them all. Everything they say about the South is true and then some. Also noted, don’t judge a culture by the way they drive. If that held true then rural southerners would be the most polite, erudite, cultured people on Earth.

/long-ass rant

 
 

Not to be persnickety (I love that word), but having underground parking or a basement makes no difference. Ground floor is 0, walking up the stairs gets you to the 1st floor, walking up gets you to the 2nd, etc, etc. The level at street level is not 1. Its like starting a (real) football game 1-1, or you being 1 on the day you are born, rather than 0. It makes no sense.

No, whole number counting from 0 is what makes no sense. If you’re talking about iterations then before your apply the first one you’ve started with the zeroth. If I apply that concept to a building then the ground is the zeroth, ie, no structure applied. Even the first floor has walls and a ceiling, hence is not nothing, but something.

Note that rooms in buildings are usually named from “1”, ie 301, 302. A zeroth room is quite unusual. After all, there is no “zeroth” finger on the human hand. You’re basically confusing concrete, countable objects with an operand. (Okay, I added a “storey” to my building, that makes it 1 iteration, 1 storey–but storey does not mean the same thing as floor. 0 iteration has 1 floor, 1 iteration has 2 floor, etc.)

Note that in many US buildings, the Lobby floor is L and the “first storey” is labeled 2.

 
 

Okay, one of you yobbos activated the architect pedant.

Re: floor labeling. It’s kind of at the designer’s whim. Myself, with new construction where the entry level is typically at grade, will call that floor Ground, and the next one up will be Second.

However, with existing floors (and as N__B alluded to, the Italian tradition of piano nobile establishes the primary floor above grade; the level above that may be at grade or slightly recessed. In any case, it’s not the first floor; but maybe is not a basement either, which has negative connotations. So then that floor becomes Ground, the one above can be either First or Second, depending on the building configuration.

For instance, the rehab I am currently procrastinating on; the entry level floor is about 4 feet above grade at the street side, however, on the opposite side, facing the river, the level below entry is fully exposed. Therefore, it’s kind of a misnomer to call it “Basement” and becomes Ground Floor, with the Entry Level being First.

It may also be noted that building codes have specific ways of counting floors and determining a grade elevation which will identify 1st floor, etc, but this doesn’t have to apply to the floor naming conventions, as long as you can keep the plan examiners and inspectors on board. The codes will count ANY level, whether above or below grade, as a “Floor”.

Also, not a gator, regarding room numbering; piffle. I often use 100 or 200 or 300 for rooms; again depends on the designer’s preference. I like to reserve the numbers for conference rooms or other more notable spaces.

The old building my office is in is three stories above grade; the ground floor houses retail and has a separate address and entrance; so the next floor up became First Floor, and my office is on the floor above, the Second Floor. Which contains two suites, number 200 and 201.

Sorry about that, but someone else started it.

 
 

the level above that may be at grade or slightly recessed.

Arerrgggeherrrehh. Pedant FALE.

The level BELOW that. Actor-level self-pwnership, that was.

 
 

OMG. This conversation makes me want to jump out a 4th level window. But I guess I’d better jump out a 5th level to make sure I attain terminal velocity, and 4th = 3rd but not really.

Also, not a gator, regarding room numbering; piffle. I often use 100 or 200 or 300 for rooms; again depends on the designer’s preference. I like to reserve the numbers for conference rooms or other more notable spaces.

PLEASE stay with that system. I’m working on a casino at the moment–door numbers look like HCSK1000116-A (b, c, etc…) WTF? It’s like this dumbass architect was afraid that if he numbered a door without making referece to the plan sheet, area of the hotel, floor, room number, etc…that he would never find the door again. Douche. A simple system: Letter for area, number for floor, 1xx, 2xx, etc, then the room number, with letter suffixes for multiple doors…

I will say that this goofy 20 character system, being so confusing, has the benefit of trapping zombie victims for your dining pleasure. They’re dusty and conservative, being construction tradesmen in the Northwest, but if you scoop the rocks out, there is enough brain to allow for motor movement and the ability to give a fuck about Nascar.

 
 

has the benefit of trapping zombie victims for your dining pleasure

tsam has recognized the prevalence of zombies in the construction and design professions. Curses!!

 
 

tsam has recognized the prevalence of zombies in the construction and design professions. Curses!!

Dudes, that’s like acknowledging there are many Jews in banking…

 
 

tsam has recognized the prevalence of zombies in the construction and design professions. Curses!!

It didn’t take me long to figure that out when I started in the business. I’ve been attacked 50 times, and every time it was a zombie. I’m a christian, which makes me a zombie target and zombies are satanists and scary.

 
 

I get so sick of this bullshit. My state continued school segregation through a very transparent sleight-of-hand up until the last 5 years or so – and yet I’d hear from white people all the time about “why can’t THOSE PEOPLE get their act together?” In one memorable exchange, where I was doing a teacher training and explaining that the roots of poverty in the Delta region were easily traceable to plantation agriculture and the sharecropping system being replaced by mechanized farming, one of the white teachers asked, “why don’t THOSE PEOPLE just MOVE then?” My response was to circle the area on the map in the state where there is a large population of WHITE welfare recipients and ask, “why don’t THESE people move? There aren’t any jobs here, either. It’s because it’s easier to be poor in a familiar place, where you have family, friends, and acquaintances, and it’s not as if we have given THOSE PEOPLE the tools they would need in order to succeed somewhere else. Would you rather be poor and illiterate and surrounded by a social support system of friends and family, or poor and illiterate in a faraway city where you don’t know anyone?” Which pretty much ended that discussion.

It’s just disgusting. I live in a state where the white majority has, for the past 40 + years, been kicking the poor black people while they lay on the ground writhing in misery, and screaming while they kick “WHY DON’T YOU PULL YOURSELF UP?”

Well argued as usual, Jennifer. Unfortunately, people like you appear to be in the sights of Arizona’s governor;

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-us-arizona-ethnic-studies,0,3903974.story?track=rss

Apparently, it will no longer be legal to teach Hispanic students that there is such a thing as oppression by white racists, because that promotes resentment of the white race, which is totally meaning that Hispanics are the real racists. One or two generations from now, expect textbooks that tell you that white people were the ones working on plantations and black people were the ones living in the house getting rich off of the poor white man’s labor.

 
 

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