The only thing you can do when you see things like this is A.) wonder where the rest of the faculty are and B.) hope they grow out of it.
It does raise some interesting questions, though. Do the kids not realize they are also white, and should probably not be there because they are de facto violating the rules via their whiteness? And why are they mostly only interviewing only white kids. And third, when did snapping take the place of clapping, or is that just something else I missed?
At any rate, they are kids, and college is where they are supposed to do stupid things, so they are at least in the right place. This made me laugh, though:
I guess if you are a Republican, and this is the face of the left to you, it could be problematic. I think the best lesson they could learn from this is not the message they are trying to send, but the organizational skills that can be later put to use rallying around more solid causes and discovering that when it comes to change, showing up is 90% of the battle. As long as they are not violent or actually get someone fired for no reason, just let them be, I say.
Which automatically gives them a leg up for me, because protests = crowds = lots of people and that shit ain’t happening for me. Also related:
There is going to be a long hot night because of the Castile verdict, which has even right-wingers scratching their heads.
*** Update ***
Good piece here.
schrodingers_cat
Can we shut off Larry King on the rhs? Its distracting.
ETA: Used NoScript to block ora.tv, Larry King is gone.
debbie
I can’t agree with the ACLU on this.
John Cole
@debbie: I agree with it.
Schlemazel
@schrodingers_cat:
If you are only seeing Larry you are lucky. I see him alternating with that fat, phony fucking POS, Jesse the boobie. I should get noscript
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
When I google “RHS,” I get stuff like Royal Horticultural Society and Riverside High School, neither of which makes much sense in context. What do you mean?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
At this point I’m only going to listen to black women, and follow them if they want to lead. White people are crazy.
wallace winfrey
oh hai i made it to the front page of balloon-juce!
JPL
@John Cole: First of all I agree with the ACLU, but also agree that it could send a strong message that bullying is wrong. Words do matter. I assume the verdict will be overturned, because of the law cases the judge cited. His interns had to dig deep to come up with one that was 200 years old.
Gelfling 545
@debbie: I kind of do agree. Having known someone who was trying to get put of a relationship where the guy kept threatening suicide, I know that people get to the point at which saying “go, ahead, then if that’s what you want” is the only way to save their own sanity.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@wallace winfrey:
It’s not much of a step up, tbh.
Schlemazel
@John Cole:
It is an ugly choice and there is plenty of room to argue but I do see the ACLUs point as the decider for me. If this stops legitimate end-of-life discussions that is not a positive result. In this case I don’t get the impression that was what was happening so we have to wait for further, more germane rulings but this one is dangerous.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Right Hand Side, its an abbreviation used while proving mathematical theorems. If
LHS = RHS (left hand side = right hand side), then you have proven your assertion.
For example, Newton’s second law says that Force = rate of change of momentum.
Gelfling 545
@Gelfling 545: thats supposed to read don’t. I hate the ipad.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
NM already answered
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@JPL:
The judge was pretty clear that it wasn’t her bullying, it was her criminal negligence by not contacting anyone once she knew he was back in the toxic truck.
ETA: re end of life decisions don’t really have to do with this case – he was a healthy 17 year old.
JPL
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: What do think will happen? From what I’ve read, which is not enough, it sounded like she was just as much troubled as he was. The get back in, though was troublesome.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
Who is NM?
wallace winfrey
i think the point i was trying to make was i think the original message is OK, but the college kids come across as unserious with the ironic goth makeup, goofy attire and general freak show atmosphere (yes, john, the snapping is some new hipster shit) which all adds up to the rather beautiful turn of phrase “performative wokefulness”. also, weinstein for being “very progressive” sure seems eager to be used as a bit player by the most obvious of obvious propaganda outlets.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
@Schlemazel:
HAHAHA, n/m, figured that one out!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@JPL:
She’ll spend time in prison, but not the maximum, as she should. She’s a psychopath. Will probably get a lot of probation, community service, and court ordered counseling.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
Haven’t followed this too closely but here I go:
1. I’m assuming white students in the movement would be ok with this. It would only be for a day and is voluntary. So not violating anyone’s rights. I don’t think what Weinstein said is a fireable offense, but students are free to call for said firing, which likely won’t happen. Weinstein claimed to being stalked. If true, that’s illegal and wrong.
A RW friend on Facebook in college is freaking out over of it. He was mad that protesters interrupted Weinstein’s class. Yawn
wallace winfrey
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: it’s not often you see your name in an image on a site you’ve been frequenting daily for 10+ years
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@wallace winfrey:
Him going on Fox is the tell. Apparently “deeply progressive” means alt-right curious.
Roger Moore
I think a lot of these people have the same underlying problem as Evangelical Christians. They both want very much to be righteous, and they’ve been taught that persecution is proof of their righteousness. Unfortunately, they’re living in environments where they aren’t being persecuted. That’s why they blow the tiniest thing- people saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” or whites refusing to leave campus for a day- out of proportion. They can either pretend that people not going along is the equivalent of being fed to lions, or they can act like complete assholes about it and treat the inevitable backlash as persecution.
Davis X. Machina
@wallace winfrey:
Via, IIRC, the slam poetry community. It’s not to show approval of the performance, per se, but appreciation for the truth of an utterance.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Okay, thanks. Had not come across that, but then I barely scraped through high school algebra. Not sure what it has to do with Larry King (FWIW, I do not see any sign of Larry King lurking around my Balloon Juice), but is apparently an issue for some.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
Never mind,
sorry fpr not being clearer
John Cole
@Davis X. Machina: thanks
JPL
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: thank you. I do hope that its the verdict scares some teenagers though.
MobiusKlein
The problem with traffic blocking in a medium to large city is that folks merely 2 blocks away see none of the messsge, only the traffic.
They hop off muni and walk, never seeing a thing.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Husband kitteh’s uncle thinks he is being persecuted too. He lives in India, retired as a high ranking govt official and is a brahmin by birth, so pray tell what the persecution is? That he can’t foist his beliefs on everyone else. Needless to add is a Modi bhakt. Evangelical or not, RWNJs of the religious kind have a high degree of persecution complex.
SiubhanDuinne
@wallace winfrey:
Hate to tell you this, but in 1959-60, we Would-Be Beatniks were snapping like mad instead of clapping, at jazz and folk music concerts, comedy shows, etc. in coffee houses all around Chicago. I was a senior in High School and remember feeling very hip. Or back then we might have called it “hep.”
satby
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: @JPL: she didn’t just tell him to get back into the truck, she listened to him die and then bragged about it to her friends. She was convicted because she had a duty (in the eyes of the court) to notify someone (his family, the police) during the suicide. The egging him on was repugnant, but it’s not the main factor in the conviction, at least according to the judge’s statements convicting her (as reported).
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
Yeah, got that about two seconds later :-)
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Larry King’s mug was on the right hand side of my screen, playing as a gif.
Baud
I feel persecuted.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Okay. Not on mine, so I couldn’t figure out at first what you were talking about.
It still seems a bit odd to me that we don’t all see the same stuff at the same time. I’m not used to all this individualized personalized algorithmized marketing.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@JPL:
13 Reasons Why is a big controversial deal because of all the issues it raises with that age group. My kids are grown, but for parents of teenagers this case raised a bunch of issues and listening to them talk about the things that go on off their radar screens due to social media accounts is hair raising. What a minefield.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Sounds boss.
JMG
College kids always seem weird and kinda dumb to everyone but themselves and high school kids. It was like that when i was in college and LBJ and Nixon were Presidents. I assume it was that way when Francois Villon was at the Sorbonne. It takes the experience of life and the wisdom of age to realize EVERYONE is weird and kind of dumb.
Swannie
If you are the parent of college-bound kids this should terrify you.
Aleta
“There is this issue of what I can say or what I can’t say, and who’s going to dismiss me or demean me for saying it. And that is new in the American discourse.” New for him and his dad maybe.
Baud
@JMG:
QFT.
JPL
@satby: Finch’s dog walker is entering middle school next year, and the one advice I gave him was if some one says dare you, walk away. I’m not sure that any sentence will reform Carter, but it’s the only thing the verdict allows.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Swannie: Why? I’m more afraid of alt-reichists causing trouble on campus
sdhays
Ugh. The kids are being silly. But I instantly felt that part of the story is missing when Brett decided to do an interview with the Confederate Pravda channel. He should have known that would inflame the situation. Confederate Pravda had him on for one reason and one reason alone and that was to show their old, racist audience how dangerous “the left” is and how colleges are destroying our values. That showed, at best, hubris (a belief he could get past their desire to use him for their own propaganda) and poor judgement, and perhaps something else that isn’t addressed.
FWIW, I thought the report was terrible. It didn’t even touch upon where this idea of having white students and faculty remain off campus for a day came from; it just sprang forth from Zeus’ head. What has happened that have the campus so riled up in the first place? Were there escalating local events, or is it basically coming from something in the national discourse? Seven plus minutes, and basically the only interesting story here, as far as Vice/HBO is concerned, is that students there are being as assholish as Newt Gingrich or Mitch “Yet, she persisted” McConnell on one of their nice days. I still have really no idea of what the hell is actually going on at Evergreen State College.
And, yes, what the hell is with everyone interviewed being white? Bizarre…
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@satby:
Right, that’s what I got out of it too – the judge pointed out she had the names and numbers of his mother and his sister on her phone, and the truck was a short way away from an emergency vehicle which could have saved him. I think the judge made the right call.
sdhays
@Aleta: Yeah, I caught that too. Wow…
wallace winfrey
@SiubhanDuinne:
Everything old is new again. I’m sure you’re right, but I noticed a resurgence a couple years back of snapping in conversations and exclamations of “sahi ho” at gatherings of people who like to talk about how the Democratic Party has nothing to offer them as they float in their pools of privilege in/around the Boulder, CO area where I reside.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Groovy as fuck.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@sdhays: A Day Without Whites is based on having a day without any minorities on campus. It was like A Day Without Immigrants. It’s meant to show how important non-white students and faculty are. All of the above were completely voluntary as I understand it.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Manipulating someone into killing themself should not be protected speech.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: And you are a gas.
Baud
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: I would think involuntary would be illegal.
SiubhanDuinne
@wallace winfrey:
Makes me wonder now how long ago (centuries, probably) finger-snapping first became a signal of approbation. Some social historian PhD candidate needs to get cracking on a dissertation about this.
wallace winfrey
@debbie:
I agree, and think some of my midwestern relatives and ex-coworkers should be brought up on attempted murder charges for subjecting me to both the Mark Levin show and the Michael Savage show for whole minutes at a time.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Baud: Obviously, which is why I don’t understand what the big deal is
Baud
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Don’t matter to me none.
sdhays
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: My confusion is mostly on the lines of what precipitated this specifically on this campus, but I admit I still don’t get the logic for this particular demonstration. In the case of “A Day Without Immigrants”, the idea is to demonstrate how different life would be without immigrants in the lives of non-immigrants. As for “A Day Without Whites”, I have to say that if you dropped that on me out of the blue, I’d assume it was an alt-right response to “A Day Without Minorities”.
I’m clearly missing something.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Probably Benedictine monks.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aleta:
:: nods ::
I am one gone chick.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I was thinking Aristophanes’ audiences.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@sdhays: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/30/escalating-debate-race-evergreen-state-students-demand-firing-professor
This should help
Apparently, minorities leaving campus for a day is a tradition or happened in the past. That’s what the idea is based on. That whites should cede the space of the campus for a day for non-white minorities
Kathleen
@Davis X. Machina: “Beatniks” used to do this in coffee houses back in the day.
ETA SD beat me to it.
Baud
For the record, A Day Without Balloon Juice would be a bad idea.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Actually it was geometry that required proofs. Don’t you remember, you either prove something directly, by proving LHS=RHS, or do a proof by contradiction.
Nora
Without some clearer laws, I kind of agree with the ACLU, though I didn’t when I first read about the verdict. The question is what your duty of care is to someone else. You do not have a duty to save a random stranger you see dying in the street. You do not have a duty to stop someone who’s trying to commit suicide if you have no connection with that person. There are situations in which you DO have a duty to act — if you’re a police officer, say, or if you’re in a position where you have assumed responsibility for that other person. Did she really assume responsibility for him by talking to him via cell phone? If we want to make that the rule, okay, but I think we need to change the laws in order to make that the rule, because it doesn’t necessarily follow that she had that responsibility under the law that existed at the time of the actions.
Understand, I am not condoning her actions, especially her telling him to get back in the truck when he’d changed his mind. I think that was horrible behavior and I think she should regret that for the rest of her life and have that on her conscience for the rest of her life. I’m just arguing about whether it was CRIMINAL, not whether it was wrong.
Ruviana
@SiubhanDuinne: Ooh, maybe you can answer my weird question! Did you say “pale green” as an indication of approval or agreement (like someone might say sweet or awesome)? I knew about the finger snapping though.
debbie
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I think that’s what ticks me off the most about ACLU’s position. This had zero to do with end of life issues.
Kathleen
@Baud: Right on.
ArchTeryx
Apropo of nothing (probably should have looked up an open thread for this).
Yeah, it’s just one person on the interwebs, but I got pretty heavily tone-policed over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money in comparing the silent slaughter the Republican Congress is about to foist on us to Nazi death camps. (Out of sight, out of mind, pretty much).
Until people (who didn’t yet know I have a job and health insurance through it now) did point out that it was my own ox about to get slaughtered. They also pointed out that the Jews weren’t the first ones shipped to the death camps – that would be the disabled and the intellectuals, of which I am both. That finally shut up the tone policemen.
The thing is, I am no less enraged if it ISN’T my ox about to get gored. It just replaced naked, blind fear with HULK SMASH! Mass murder is mass murder, whether it’s being committed by the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin’s KGB, or the Republican party.
We’re way too outraged about OTHER regimes’ mass murder and willfully blind about our own. That’s why Black Lives Matter got started in the first place. I wonder what movement will arise in the face of hundreds of thousands of deaths from lack of health care?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: For whom?
Uncle Cosmo
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It may only be a “tell” that he was way too confident of his ability to navigate a den of snakes like Faux Noise. Maybe he thought this was a way to get publicity for his position – forgetting that in this case “the medium” would only twist things around to support their preferred narrative. And overlooking the fact that no matter how intellectually accomplished he might be, the staff at Faux Noise are in no way stupid & are very skilled & experienced at doing exactly that.
TL;DR version: Appearing on Faux is like mudwrestling with a pig – you get filthy & the pig enjoys it!
sukabi
@John Cole: i get where the ACLU is coming from with their statement, but what that girl did wasn’t “an end of life” conversation. It may have started out that way in the months prior to the boy committing suicide, but in the day of and in particular in the moments before he did it she was coercive.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: Nah, the sign language used instead of speech by Cistercians of the Strict Observance.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Civilization.
Patricia Kayden
@debbie: What she did by egging on her boyfriend to commit suicide was awful but was it criminal? I can see arguments from both sides.
JPL
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: The ACLU is against the verdict because of right to free speech, which I agree with. For me it’s the case law that judge used. Her action is nothing like the warehouse fire in Worcester where the homeless couple might not have had the mental capacity to understand they should have notified the fire department they were okay. There’s no doubt though that Michelle Carter is evil, and I’m not excusing her actions.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@ArchTeryx: I completely agree and have been at this position for awhile now; at least for 3 or 4 months. Often, policymakers and other leaders like the President inadvertently get innocent people killed. In most situations, with most normal people, they wouldn’t know ahead of time that their actions and policies would hurt or kill people, at least not intentionally.
Today’s GOP (and I call then that for a reason to avoid confusing them with actual republicans) is the exact opposite. They know full well what the impact of their policies are. The AHCA will kill thousands and lead to early deaths over the next several years. Murder by proxy is still murder. It bothers me that McConnell will likely either be retired or dead by the time this starts. Consequently, he and most other GOP pols who vote for this mass murder will face no real (legal) consequences
Patricia Kayden
@sukabi: Coercive? She encouraged him to take his life. She’s an evil person but I don’t see how she coerced him into doing anything. She simply pushed him to do something he seemed to want to do. She should have got him some help but she has no heart and didn’t care one whit for his wellbeing.
Strange that she’s facing jail time for what she did when people who deliberately kill others get away scot free.
Uncle Cosmo
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: It might mean nothing more than he stupidly thought he could control the messaging because he’s sooooo much more intelligent than the staff at Faux Noise. Forgetting that they are past masters at twisting an appearance to suit their own purposes. College professors (like MDs, like engineers) often get ambushed by their own intellectual arrogance.
“Never mud-wrestle a pig – you just get filthy, while the pig enjoys it!”
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: If the verdict stands, it will be interesting case law. I do think that Conster is correct in his opinion that she’s a psychopath though.
J R in WV
@wallace winfrey:
Wallace,
Welcome to the Balloon Juice Universe!!! IT is different here, a little strange, but mostly nice.
Keep in touch!
JR
Baud
@J R in WV:
I think you meant a little nice, but mostly strange.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Yeah, I think it was criminal. I think she put in a great deal of effort to get him to kill himself.
rikyrah
Thread
Clint SmithVerified account @ClintSmithIII
Something to keep in mind today is that showing statistics of racial disparities in crim justice might have the opposite effect we intend 1/
https://twitter.com/ClintSmithIII/status/876112575490121730?
…………………………………………………
Before the statistics were kept, Black folk were told that what we knew about the criminal justice system and US – was all in our imagination.
Well, then, we went about the time to get the statistics to prove what WE already knew.
About OURSELVES…..
and, this thread just confirms what we thought White folks thought about us and the criminal justice system.
THEY SAY that White folks got mad about BLACK LIVES MATTER.
I call that bullshyt.
what they got mad about, is that Black Lives Matter, and other social media presence groups, proved, with video, about what the statistics said .
they put the bodies in their face, and then dared to tell White folks, who comfortably ignored the black and white statistics…
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW.
How DARE Black people actually think that their EXISTENCE shouldn’t mean a DEATH SENTENCE.
HOW DARE US.
So, they go out, and do the bullshyt of All Lives Matter, and Blue Lives Matter, and try and find every reason possible to excuse summary executions of Black folks by police…
And, think that Black folks will just shut up about it.
That time has passed.
And, even though we have that phucking racist in the White House
And Attorney General White Citizens Council….
We are not going back to the time where Black folks could be killed and folks wouldn’t speak up because they were scared. That was our grandparents.
That shyt’s over. Period.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@rikyrah: ?????
J R in WV
@wallace winfrey:
Oh, so you’ve been lurking. Welcome to the world of typed speech!! You know what we are, raving jackels!! or is it ravening jackels??? I dunno. Enjoy!
Regarding Michelle Carter and her egging her “boyfriend” into committing suicide, that’s really sick, and on the evil side of sick. So I’m with the court, she has a duty to not push someone into doing something she HOPES will kill them.
Imagine if she was convincing him to take a huge overdose of smack? Or play Russian Roulette for the 3rd or 4th spin of a revolver? Or stop using that evil insulin, which we all know comes from murdered livestock? To not vaccinate his children when an epidemic is raging in China?
Somewhere there you run from free speech to evil… and I’m nearly a free speech absolutist, personally. But Ms Carter crossed the line when he died. I guess that’s the bright line, when you kill someone, it isn’t speech anymore.
Hope she isn’t a psychopath, that isn’t curable. Other pathologies may be, and I hope she can be cured. Evil isn’t amenable to a cure either – look at the Rs… and the people who claim to be xtian, but are full of hate… how do you balance that with the teachings of the carpenter?
Omnes Omnibus
@Nora: I agree with this.
Diana
@Kathleen: but according to West Side Story snapping your fingers at someone was a threat. And that movie came out at the same time as the beats.
JPL
@rikyrah: There are no words. The verdict last night was a kick in the gut.
schrodingers_cat
@Diana: Really? I thought it was just to call someone’s attention or as beat to music, like clapping.
Finger snapping and whistling used in one of my favorites from the late 80s, from Tezaab (Acid). A Hindi movie about Mumbai’s underworld with a young Anil Kapoor (game show host from Slum Dog).
Its about Mumbai at night, how it is a haven for people who have nothing to lose and no place to call home, who no one cares about.
sdhays
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Thanks. That’s a much better overview of what’s going on than the video.
I now sort of get the logic, but it still seems torturous. The idea was to basically get white involvement in what had previously been a minority-driven activity, which seems a worthwhile goal. But it still seems ill-conceived to me. The only white people who would do this would be people who are already supportive, and they would go off campus and take the day off or hold all-white meetings off campus discussing diversity, which just seems weird. And, presumably, if a significant portion of the white people on campus participated, the campus would essentially come to a halt. I guess that’s the goal?
I feel the lessons that people are supposed to draw from this are too complicated. But I’m terrible at organizing people, so what do I know?
J R in WV
@JMG:
I wrote a paper about Francois Villon, comparing him to the leader of the Doors, Jim Morrison, who was as much a libertine as Francois was. Though I don’t think Jim ever stole the entire gold coinage poor fund of a major cathedral, nor pimped in taverns. But there isn’t that much money in that now-a-days, compared to being a rock singer.
Francois was a performer in taverns, which was a big as you could get before amps wer invented. But there wasn’t much money in that. And no one is sure if Villon died at the hand sof the aristocracy, or just faded into the countryside. And come still say Jim Morrison lives.
Their poetry was similar too, for a couple of guys centuries and an ocean AND an industrial revolution apart. And the end of Royalty ruling most of us, so far, which along with the Church was Francois’s biggest problem. But still, I got a A on the paper
Swannie
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: If your kids are gonna receive a useless education why not send them to a local cow college? Why waste money you could spend in your golden years? Better yet, why not just send them to truck driving school so they can learn a useful skill?
The alt-right is a fringe movement of losers.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: A day without Baud is even worse.
Schlemazel
@debbie:
yeah but, as the ACLU says, it could affect conversations about end of life issues. I thought I had pointed out both sides there
J R in WV
@Baud:
Well, yeah, maybe… It varies quite a bit from time to time and event to event.
If she’s been browsing for 10 years, she knows all about us, there’s no hiding it for more than a couple of days!
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Swannie: Why is it useless? This stuff doesn’t happen everyday, everywhere. It likely never will. Truck driving is not a good industry to get into. Assuming self-driving cars get off the ground, human drivers will be replaced.
The alt-right may be losers, but they’re far more mainstream these days. There have been violent clashes across the country, involving, not always them but other reactionary groups
Over the past months, several murders and mass murders have happened because of alt-rightists or those inspired by their rhetoric
Sab
@ArchTeryx: I missed that you got a job and insurance. Congrats!
Agree with your comment otherwise that it’s not somehow benign to kick a bunch of people off health insurance knowing it will kill them just because the person voting for that result doesn’t actually pull the trigger. I know so many people who may be affected by this who “followed the rules” all their lives and then found that it’s a whole different set of rules if you develop a health problem: no job, no income, no insurance, minimal treatment.
Glad you’ll be around for a while. We need your voice.
eclare
@JPL: I just don’t understand why anyone would encourage someone to kill themselves. When I was in middle school, there was a rash of suicides among the moms, it was awful. I remember being stupid and 18…but this is weird.
debbie
@Schlemazel:
Look, I fully support the right to end one’s life. I have my copy of Final Exit just in case. But it should totally be a person’s choice and that decision should be made freely, with no coercion or bullying, which is what Michelle Carter did. She sent more than 1,000 texts to him about this! If you read my second link, she crashed and took over a fundraisier for her dead “boyfriend.” That’s psychopathic.
Omnes Omnibus
@eclare:
Because s/he is an asshole.
bupalos
@rikyrah: What the hell does it matter if you speak up when everyone else has already subliminally decided they aren’t going to listen? Who says your grandparents weren’t speaking up? Seems to me that generation DID speak up. The reaction of white culture was to do a lot of window dressing and formal recognition and things to make the guilt more deniable, while the underlying attitudes just burrowed deeper into its sick soul. It’s a much subtler fight now, it has very little to do with ‘being brave enough to speak out.’ I’m not sure really what it does take.
I’m a little tempted to say that America is simply over. The crimes were too great, and committed right in the face of the highest ideals. Like a murder in church.
bupalos
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s this thing, you know, it’s called mental illness.
I think it’s kind of darkly hilarious that someone urging someone else to kill themselves would be called “an asshole.”
Pol Pot was SUCH a jerk!!
Omnes Omnibus
@bupalos: I am glad that I could “darkly” amuse you.
ETA: And Pol Pot? Come on.
Smiling Mortician
@wallace winfrey: I’m late to the conversation, but I live here: you were looking at a perfectly typical Evergreen student.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Pol Pot was an asshole, definitely an asshole.
Smiling Mortician
@SiubhanDuinne: Everything old is new again. Greeners are kinda into the neo-Beatnik scene.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smiling Mortician: The Antioch College of the PNW?
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I agree. I just thought Mr Pot was a bit of a jump.
Anne Laurie
@Gelfling 545:
Been there, agree it can go that way. On the other hand, when you’re texting back & forth with a suicide in progress, and they say they’ve just decided maybe it wasn’t a great idea, the proper response is not “get back in that truck right now.”
It’s a local story here & avoiding hearing about the details is just about impossible. On the one hand, the ACLU gotta ACLU; on the other hand, girl in question seems to have had enough of her own issues that getting her out of the general population has to be considered a net social positive, IMO. Hard cases make bad law, but even the most sympathetic observers seem to be arguing she’s got borderline personality disorder and figured that being The Girl Whose Boyfriend Tragically Died would *finally* make her popular like she deserved to be. And she certainly achieved ‘celebrity’ status, so there’s that…
lollipopguild
@bupalos: Our right wing friends have been busy defining down what is acceptable behavior in America. The shooting near Washington D.C. was a warning to them, but they do not listen to anything that they do not want to hear. It’s utterly amazing that they feel that the pain and suffering that they inflict as a matter of course on others will never come back on them. I am not advocating violence here just saying that if you sow the wind , you reap the whirlwind.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Mao, on the other hand, was a jerk.
jl
I am a slob and probably missed the link, but I couldn’t find anything that explained what this day of absence was about.
Whatever it was about, if it was a voluntary gesture, it seems like the prof is wildly over reacting to it. Just as much so as any of the goofy things the students did. But he wildly over reacted in a more socially acceptable way.
I teach. If thought the ‘day of absence’ was about something worthwhile, and I had a class that day, I’d probably discuss it with the class and decide with them. Depends on how important the lecture was that day. More often than I like to admit, my lectures, and many others I have had to endure as a student and a teacher are dispensable It’s not hard to find a substitute for one or two of them that will be just as useful to the students.
If the students and I decided to go ahead and ignore the day of absence, and we were harassed for it, then I would make a huge fuss.
So, I have doubts about what the prof is up to. He shouldn’t be fired for it, though.
Bill E Pilgrim
I’m rescinding my acceptance to be Emperor of thls blog.
No, I’ve made up my mind, don’t try to talk me out of it.
tybee
@Baud: rAmen
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: But Hitler was nice to his dog.
eclare
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Something we can all agree on.
Smiling Mortician
@sdhays: Evergreen is a weird place. It’s like a nature preserve for hippies (idealists, artists, stoners, nonconformists) but because this is the Pacific Northwest instead of NYC, it’s really white in Olympia. The prof didn’t want to be told by a (mostly white) student group that he wasn’t allowed on campus because he’s white. The administration whiffed. The (mostly white) students dug in.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: True, until he killed them.
Sab
@ArchTeryx: VOX has a photo of Barrasso, Grassley and McConnelL that is priceless. Looking all determined and congressional while they blow up our worlds.
Evergreen Alum
Why are only white kids interviewed? Because Evergreen is a very white school, something that has frustrated it for a very long time. The problem is that is a liberal arts school in a state with minority population percentages below the national average. Attempts to increase both student and faculty recruitment without fundamentally altering the school’s educational distinctiveness has been an ongoing and relatively futile project. Attempts to alter (and reduce) that distinctiveness have been met with resistance by the relatively powerful faculty governance group. That’s some of the backdrop here.
There have always been some students that are more demonstrative than others, and it looks like the HBO segment features the same group of “performatively woke” (gawd I love that, can I please borrow that forever?) that I’ve been seeing in other videos and photos accompanying stories about the controversy. They have a look that is about as good at capturing media attention that pairs rather well with Weinstein’s flirtation with right-wing outlets.
Smiling Mortician
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re familiar, I see?
Mary
Evergreen State College, while it is one of the most liberal politically colleges is ,yes, Antioch of the Northwest. There are many special snowflakes attending classes with no grades and an individually constructed curriculum. As my working class husband used to say during the hippie era, they really need to experience real life for a while. The students of color know more about it than most but even they are coming from upper income families. ESC ain’t cheap.
Aleta
-Buzzfeed
Omnes Omnibus
@Smiling Mortician: Daughter of one of my mom’s friend’s went there. She now lives on an island with a methane powered car and self-composting toilets. I believe they farm mushrooms.*
*Details may be hazy, but the general image is valid.
Viva BrisVegas
Those mostly white Evergreen kids seem to have very little difficulty with the application of authority, just with who is allowed to dispense it.
That said, what was Weinstein doing with Tucker Carlson? He is either extremely naive, desperately ignorant, or trying to provoke something. None of those are a good thing in a Prof.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: Is that a bad thing?
Anne Laurie
@eclare:
Remember Romeo & Juliet? I sorta understand why it’s become the standard American high-school Intro to Shakespeare, but obviously “Let’s kill ourselves & be together forever & also famous for 400 years!!!” is a message some teenagers… misinterpret.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: No.
D58826
ap is reporting that the Navy has found the bodies of the missing crewmen in a flooded compartment.
Not really a surprise.
RIP
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: Methane powered car sounds a little funky, but it might go nicely with the self composting toilets. But a mushroom farm sounds interesting. Some neighbors had one near one of my family CA farms. I thought it was so cool to go visit the weird mostly underground mushroom sheds as a kid. And when it was over 100 degrees outside in the summer, literally ‘very cool’.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne:
When the students here were doing it a few years ago, all I could think was, “Maynard G. Krebs!”
Smiling Mortician
@Omnes Omnibus: Pretty sure I know her.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smiling Mortician: There is a type.
Davebo
@Baud: Actually a day without Balloon Juice every now and then is a very very good thing.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
In the toilets?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
So I take it, you sampled the product
J R in WV
@Omnes Omnibus:
I attended Antioch College back in the 70s, it was nice. I argued with one professor that I respected a lot, claiming that as the best student, I deserved an A instead of a Pass, but he wasn’t into giving grades, so I got a pass. That was OK, it transferred OK when I enrolled in a computer science program. Interesting people, especially the better professors.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Yeah, you have it about right. College is where you do dumb shit. I did all kinds of dumb shit in college, though none of it got televised. I know that Sean Inanity will weep and wail over this shit, but really, who gives a fuck? These are 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 year old kids making dumb mistakes that many of them, if not most, will learn something from. I’m not going to lose any sleep over what happens to the teacher. I will say, I think the college president seems to be going about dealing with it the right way. He isn’t sobbing about how people are saying mean things to him, and he understands that he’s lucky enough to hold a rather rarefied position. In the meanwhile, Black guys minding their own business are going about their lives in fear that the police will shoot them for no reason. It seems like maybe the kids could make more of a stink about that, or some other big thing than who teaches at their school. I’ll put forth the usual disclaimer that this is something I won’t ever truly understand, since it doesn’t happen to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Do I look like I know fuck-all about mushroom farming?
Omnes Omnibus
@J R in WV: I am not criticizing Antioch. It is was it is. Not a school I would have chosen to go to. So I didn’t apply. Evergreen State is the same way.
sukabi
@Patricia Kayden: where’s the line between “encouragement” and “coercion” when you’re knowingly dealing with someone with mental health issues? She knew him and knew which buttons to push. Encouragement, manipulation and coercion…it’s in the details and intent.
Temporarily Max McGee (Phase II)
@Mary:
I think Bennington College might be the better match. I have friends what tended Evergreen State and others who attended Bennington, and their experiences, both socially and academically, seemed very similar.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
You look JUST like some mushroom farmers I knew in Pennsylvania, years ago.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I have never even heard of those two schools. Is ignorance bliss?
J R in WV
That’s too bad about the sailors. As soon as I learned that the collision below the waterline was in two berthing compartments – read dorms/barracks – I suspected they were asleep until the water hit them.
Being below the water line in a ship underway is interesting. You can hear the water, if there aren’t too many layers between you and the ocean.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: They are both well-regarded schools with strong cultural leftist cred.
Older
@Smiling Mortician: The whole time I was watching the Evergreen College video, I was thinking, “That girl is about the whitest person I have ever seen. How can she be calling other people “white people”?
Johannes
@debbie: For what it’s worth, as a near First Amendment absolutist I don’t think in this case that it is, for reasons given here (Part One) and here (Part Two). (Sorry; it’s long.)
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I figured out why I hadn’t heard about them, because they are not in my neck of the woods.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Do you venture outside of New England?
Kent
Evergreen is nearly all-white because it is way out in the suburbs of Olympia which is nearly all-white small city half way between Seattle and Portland, the two whitest major cities in the country. I teach HS in the Vancouver WA area to the south and Evergreen just isn’t on the radar of the occasional minority students that I get, despite being the closest residential 4-year state school (there is a closer WSU branch campus that’s a commuter school). Mostly the smart ones want to go to UW in Seattle where they can learn actual marketable skills and develop career contacts. Some in the hard sciences want to head out to WSU. The really really bright ones think places like Stanford or the east coast Ivys.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Nice shade.
AnotherAlumni
alumni here.
Yeah, these are students doing dumb things, and they’ll hopefully learn from it. Some students did dumb things when I was there, also.
But aside from attracting some overwrought students, the uniqueness of the school attracted very motivated, interesting people. The majority of my friends went onto PhDs & university or research careers. Others went to work for Microsoft and made bank. One retired and another is with Yahoo. Another has a career writing romance fiction.
It’s a public school, and significantly cheaper then Antioch. I paid for my tuition with 2 trips to the ATM. It’s more expensive now, but, I believe, the cheapest public school in the state.
It’s too bad this aspect of the school has gone viral. The current president does not seem to have a handle on the situation. The last 2 presidents were much better suited to the school and their jobs.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Not to Ohio.
Kent
Yeah. Evergreen really isn’t comparable to Antioch or Bennington or other small private liberal arts schools on the east coast. As a state school it’s more like a small version of UC Santa Cruz or perhaps Humboldt. State. It’s not very selective (I think the acceptance rate is close to 98%) so it’s your basic small regional state school with a more liberal or experimental approach to education.
I agree, the college president looks out of his depth, which might be part of the problem
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: How different is the end result? And Antioch is in Ohio.
Shalimar
@schrodingers_cat: I have been getting the Larry King video here and even more annoyingly on the bottom of every post at RawStory, despite having AdBlocker set up to supposedly block everything. Thank you for reminding me to go in and try to see if I could block the video individually. It worked. :)
AnotherAlumni
@Kent: How different is the end result? And Antioch is in Ohio.
Because it’s a state school tuition is a lot less. There are more students from different income brackets. One of my friends had served in the military. Some students were locals. Others were people who were in-state (like me) and not your typical vegan or trust fund-y student.
When I was comparing schools, Bennington was one of the most expensive schools in the country. (Hasn’t it shut down?)
lethargytartare
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I don’t mean to be a dick, but consider the possibility that the issues are more connected than you think.
i.e. maybe when you’re reading about cops getting away with murdering minorities on a monthly basis, the supposedly “small” thing of having your school, or even just one professor, imply your ideas are not worth hearing may grate a bit more than it would otherwise.