I’m very excited to announce that I have been offered a paid gig with Vox.com writing about how fake old ladies are bit shit, mainly because they’ve chosen to be old and a bit shit. However, I admit that I haven’t read any of my own articles, and besides Andrew Sullivan likes me, so that’s ok.
This is your morning open thread.
Cervantes
Transparent: your second paragraph.
Opaque (to me): your first!
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Cervantes:
Consider yourself lucky, my dear.
different-church-lady
According to right-hand widget thingy, Sarah Palin says she’ll continue “shaking up Washington”.
This is true: convulsing with laughter does tend to shake one a bit.
NotMax
The mind reels at how any early drafts read, the final repellant, repulsive, loathsome text presumably having been toned down for general consumption.
Virginia KKK insists: We are not the ‘enemies of the colored and mongrel races’
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@different-church-lady:
Who would have thunk?
Baud
Anyone have any thoughts on the Senate UI deal?
Carol
Well, I am sure someone understands what you just said but you lost me, as did Vox
different-church-lady
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Maybe they got it mixed up with Disney on Ice?
lamh36
I’m sure the usual subjects will shoo shoo this too.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: It’s obvious they’ve been studying minority outreach under the tutelage of Rinse Prebus.
Carol
Oh! I see. Boy am I dense. Vox’s opening video is repellent to me anyhow.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: What’s interesting is the nature of the “Gay Conspiracy” is to portray gays as just people, not the child-kidnapping ravenous monsters that the righteous know them to be.
Which is pretty much projection of how they acquire new members to their bizarre death cults.
MomSense
@lamh36:
Wait, that is not a noisemax headline?
NotMax
@different-church-lady
As usual, Palin gets it wrong. A Washington is stirred, not shaken.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
My alternative headline was “Ground Control to Uncle Tom”.
I’m a little too drunk to work out just how offensive that might have been.
slim shady
I’m hoping for a story on how a young female was able to sneak into the Men’s Figure Skating competition at Sochi. And then win Gold, after falling on her bee-hind about 6 times during the long program. I’m not sure that Ring of Steel was all it was cracked up to be.
Baud
@lamh36:
Jesus. If that’s true, wtf Ezra? Is he trying to compete with Chris Christie for most rapid collapse of a public figure?
Ash Can
Yay, a SP&T sighting! Since I’m still 3/4 asleep, my first thought was “I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t be posting around here anymore.” Then I read the link.
I admit I’m surprised to see Ezra Klein making such an ass of himself these days.I guess he just decided that the contrarian route is where the money is.
Baud
@Ash Can:
He’s probably right, sadly.
Elizabelle
Sarah: don’t be leaving us to be a Vox Fox.
And I truly do not understand Ezra Klein’s hiring skills, or lack thereof.
What a self-inflicted wound.
ETA: WHOA! Editing this immediately. I meant that about the Falwell U hire, not YOU!!
And no, I have not finished my coffee yet. Just sipping the caffeine now.
NotMax
@Sarah, Proud and Tall
That would have been significantly over the top.
Might have chosen ‘Guess Whose Vox Is Being Gored?’ But that perhaps is a little too obscure.
raven
Better than
JR
I will keep posting this because I’m at a loss to understand how otherwise smart people hire morons.
Ambrosino is a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty “University.”
Let me repeat that: Ambrosino is a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty “University.” That makes him a moron.
WTF? Regardless of anything else, how can anyone take a graduate of a fake university seriously? Going to Falwell’s fundamentalist churchy conjob should be disqualifying in itself.
So, once again, Ambrosino is a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty “University.” Right now Vox sounds like it’ll be a low rent version of Politico. Who aspires to that?
p.a.
@Baud: Well, where is the money coming from? Does Ezra have backers? If so, do they have a say in personnel? If not, is Vox a Sully-type startup? 1)Create following 2)Go off on own 3)? 4)Profit!
NonyNony
@different-church-lady:
No, I had this wingsplained to me the other day. See, the Queen in Frozen is hiding her true self from the world because she’s afraid that everyone will hate her. When she gets “outed” she flees into the wilderness. But then she comes to realize that her family and country will accept her for who she is so she decides to live as an “out”
gayice queen.Basically any story where the lesson is “don’t hide who you are – be yourself and your friends and family will love you no matter what” is a story about gay people these days.
(I have to say when I first read the stories about wingnuts saying this my mind was boggled because seriously – WTF? There’s no gay message in this at all, except in the sense that it has a message to all people about being nice to each other, and gay people are in fact also people. But apparently some wingnut went and saw it with his kids and he saw the gay everywhere and posted it to Facebook or sent an e-mail round or something to raise the Nut-Signal. Once you know that the assumption is that any story that has a lesson of “be yourself and your friends and family will love you no matter what” is automatically about gay people living openly instead of hiding in closets, you can see how they get there.)
beergoggles
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Aunty Tom would be the term ur looking for..
Betty Cracker
I suppose it was foolish to hold out any hope that a better media might evolve from new platforms. It’s the same old money-grubbing ball of shit, whether it’s flung on your doorstep or piped through the tubes to your tab.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
There is a market, though, of people who want accurate and informative media.
Why don’t these wankers feel that’s worth their effort?
Gin & Tonic
This is really rich. I wish I could find humor in it.
Yesterday, pro-Russian gangs, including people bused in from Russia, set upon a pro-Ukrainian demonstration in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, beat people, sending dozens to the hospital and stabbing to death at least one. This morning the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issues a statement that due to the lack of civil control, it reserves the right to protect its countrymen in Ukraine by force.
So they send in goons to beat and kill people, then say: see, it’s unstable there, we have to send in troops.
Citizen_X
@JR:
QFT. Don’t ever grant that wingnut mill the slightest degree of respect.
tybee
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
well, i laughed. but i’m a terrible person.
Betty Cracker
@lamh36: WTF? Screw Klein and his new venture. Seriously. If he said that, fuck him, and fuck it.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: That’s why I like Balloon Juice, it is an island of sanity floating in the sea of untruths and half-lies, and it does it with humor.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I left you reply but WP eated it.
Yatsuno
@NonyNony: There is really only one overtly gay scene in the movie, and if you blink you’ll miss it. When the shopkeeper waves to his family in the sauna, notice there are no women present except for what may be a couple of little girls? Even then it’s just ambiguous enough for that. “Frozen” is about acceptance and about how true love isn’t just about the romantic parts. It’s also a damn good movie.
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Hi dear! New work schedule & I’m off to it here in a couple minutes. Loves ya!
cleek
@different-church-lady:
so, Palin is responsible for cracking the Washington Monument ?
ruemara
@lamh36: anytime. I’ve been writing on various topics for years & FSM knows he hasn’t read me, which makes me perfectly qualified.
schrodinger's cat
Ok my comment resurfaced! Thanks Betty or SP&T.
BTW did you guys see McCain’s op-ed in NYT? I has a boiling mad, after reading it.
Felonius Monk
I guess Ezra and VOX have saddled up for their ride off to Oblivion. God speed, Ezra.
Origuy
Can Sarah or someone define “bit shit”? It’s not in Urban Dictionary. Her first paragraph would make more sense if I knew what it meant.
Suffern ACE
@Gin & Tonic: pretty much. But the US has done the same thing. Therefore, liberals should accept and praise those things when a poor, powerless country like Russia does them to a strong us backed puppet state like Ukraine. Blowback equals justice!
catclub
@NotMax: My wife says one of our cats is evil. I say differently motivated.
Gin & Tonic
@Suffern ACE: Спасибо, товарищ.
Mnemosyne
@Yatsuno:
I’m still waiting to get my DVD, but I think there is an adult woman in there — it’s hard to tell because the steam needs to hide the most telltale signs. But she has long braids and is zaftig, as the kids say.
I read Libby Anne at LoveJoyFeminism and she was shocked to discover when visiting her homeschooling, Quiverfull fundamentalist family that they all love “Frozen” and her younger sisters run around singing “Let It Go” all day.
(Libby Anne is not shocked because it’s a “gay” song, but because she thinks of it as being about her escape from fundamentalism and she just doesn’t get how they can like it, too.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE: Good channel of Comrade BIP.
Cervantes
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
I never have, actually — and now I come to find that research indicates people who think of luck as an external, unpredictable factor in their lives tend to be less mentally healthy — so better not!
Aaron Morrow
Where’s the analogies to Conservative Revisionist Fantasy MLK? You can’t work at Vox without them!
Note to self: If money marks giving me sacks of cash require me to hire a racist homophobe before any minorities are on the payroll, DO NOT TAKE THAT MONEY.
kindness
@catclub: Karmicly challenged. Cats aren’t evil, some are just challenged.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Why would “new platforms,” unlike almost every other technological innovation, come with a built-in moral perspective?
I guess I don’t understand the complaint. There are plenty of good publications out there on various “platforms,” don’t you think? Is it your expectation that “mainstream journalism” in this country will someday be worth a tinker’s damn?
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic:
The oldest trick in the book, no?
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes:
No. As I said, such an expectation is foolish.
Cervantes
@lamh36:
Who or what are the usual subjects? What does “shoo shoo” mean?
Also, who is Joshua Foust and what makes you think he can be trusted? (I’m not saying he can’t be.)
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: OK, but then do you agree with this?
If you do agree, then it does not matter that Vox may or may not be useless.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: Yes, and there always have been plenty of good publications, but they’re not generally influential because few people read them. I was merely noting that the overturning of the establishment press via the digital age isn’t going to change that, which, while a pity, isn’t unexpected.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: Sure.
But maybe the predictable awfulness can be set aside for a bit — while the good stuff can be highlighted?
Just a thought.
Steeplejack
@Origuy:
I think she meant “a bit shit,” as at the end of that same sentence, meaning slightly shitty. It’s a Britishism.
different-church-lady
@Cervantes: Obviously you’re not aware of all internet traditions.
different-church-lady
@Steeplejack:
Is she fictionally British, or actually British?
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: And a peachy thought it is! Makes me want to skip to the Well of Comity while waving my Glo-Stix, it does!
Steeplejack
@different-church-lady:
I believe the author is Australian. “She” sometimes lets her narrator’s mask slip a bit.
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
But not all traditions.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Come to think of it, you’re right, of course.